0:00

Joe Rogan podcast, check it out! The

0:02

Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day,

0:04

Joe Rogan podcast

0:06

by night, all day! So

0:09

before you

0:11

press record,

0:15

I have, I'll go most

0:17

places, and I'm here because I want to tell people

0:19

the truth about the last eight, I've had a pretty shit two years. Because

0:22

Top Gear ended in a way that

0:24

most Americans won't know, but my colleague

0:26

nearly died in a crash. And then

0:29

they left us in limbo a bit.

0:31

I've never told anyone anything about it.

0:34

Largely because my friend

0:36

and colleague who was nearly killed in the accident called

0:39

Andrew Flintoff, who was a presenter on the show. Again,

0:41

no Americans want to know who he is, but he's a

0:43

massive sports hero in the UK. He plays that weird game

0:46

called cricket. He was like our best cricket player. Can

0:49

we use this? Yeah, no, we can. I just want

0:51

to give you a quick foretaste of it. I'm

0:54

here to, I'll say some things that people wouldn't have

0:56

heard before, and they'll make them gasp a bit. Well,

0:58

as we're recording now. Yeah, that's fine. Okay. Yeah,

1:01

that's fine. What's that? I wasn't

1:03

on it, but you said that. Okay. That's fine.

1:06

Well, are we on me? Yeah, yeah. I'm going

1:08

to go into it all. Okay. But

1:10

it might be that what seems quite an avalanche

1:12

to me. Anyway, good to see you. Since we're

1:14

rolling. Ten years. Yeah, it's been a while. But

1:16

you know what? I don't ever listen to what

1:18

I say or watch what I record. I don't

1:20

watch my own shows. Good for you. You

1:23

probably don't either, do you? I don't. No. No.

1:25

It's good for the soul. Once it's done, it's

1:27

buried. Exactly. But I think I came to see

1:29

you about a month

1:31

before I received a phone call saying, do you

1:33

want to do this television show called Top Gear?

1:37

Yeah, it was before Top Gear for sure. Yeah.

1:40

And I think it was then. And I think at that point, I'd

1:42

been fielding a lot of questions about, well, why would you follow Jeremy

1:44

Clarkson on Top Gear? And I'd gone, no one

1:46

would do that. They'd be an idiot to do that. And

1:49

then I looked at the monthly payments I needed to

1:51

live my life and I got offered a bit of

1:53

not much money, but some money I thought I'll give

1:55

it a go. But most importantly, I thought the

1:58

17 year old me. if

2:00

he saw me say no to this job but punch

2:02

me in the face. Because it's my dream job. And

2:05

I know that Top Gear is a weird thing

2:07

in the US. Because I think many US people are aware

2:09

of it that it exists. But they've never

2:11

really seen it. Because it never was put on a

2:13

big network here. Yeah, but it became

2:15

very popular on YouTube. It did. Yeah, I mean,

2:17

it's a great show. Yeah,

2:20

I mean, whether my era of Top Gear will

2:23

be considered great, I don't know. I had lots

2:25

of fun making it. But following in Jeremy's footsteps

2:27

was on reflection a decision.

2:30

I made the wrong call. I shouldn't have done it. Really?

2:32

Yeah, I had a great time. But

2:34

you tried following him in the UK. Just because of

2:37

how much he's loved. And yeah. Yeah, I

2:39

just didn't realize how deep rooted it was.

2:41

I still get hate mail now. I

2:44

still get hate mail now. You could have had the

2:46

exact same show under a different name if people would

2:48

have loved it. Yeah. Yeah. And I think we made

2:50

some good films. And I love

2:52

what I did. But even if we made a

2:54

good film, it was always shit. Because it wasn't

2:56

Jeremy. I really enjoyed it, though. I enjoyed you

2:58

being on it. You know? That's very kind. You're

3:00

great. You're my favorite automotive journalist. Well, that's very

3:02

kind of you. And I've just seen what you've

3:04

arrived in as well. And I thoroughly approve of

3:06

your taste in motor vehicles. Am I allowed to

3:08

say what it is or not? Yeah, yeah. It's

3:11

a Raptor R that John Hennessy

3:14

jumps up to 1,000 horsepower. It's

3:16

fucking ridiculous. I think I'm often asked, if you

3:19

lived in America, what car would you drive? And

3:21

it would always be a Raptor. Comes

3:23

under the heading of always drink the local beer.

3:26

When you go to a city, don't order

3:28

a Heineken or a Bud. Drink the local

3:31

beer. Yeah. And the F-150 Raptor is your

3:33

local beer. Yep. That's about as American as

3:35

it gets. Dodge Rams

3:37

and Ford F-150s. Yeah.

3:40

Those are the most American vehicles. 1,000 horsepower in

3:42

a truck. It's ridiculous. We never thought it'd

3:44

be possible, did we? No. No. 0 to

3:46

60 in three seconds for a giant pickup

3:49

truck. It's awesome. And it sounds great, too.

3:52

Just has this beautiful rumble. Do you think you'll

3:54

be allowed to drive that in 10 years' time

3:56

in this state? Maybe in this

3:58

state. Yeah. if you leave, they'll

4:00

have people at the border waiting in the bushes to

4:03

arrest you the moment you cross over if you don't

4:05

have an EV. In

4:08

California, they have a mandate. After

4:13

2035, no internal combustion engine vehicles are allowed

4:15

to be sold in the state. Same

4:18

in the UK, although they ... No,

4:20

it was 2035, then the last administration

4:22

moved it back to 2030. Good

4:26

luck. They're not even ready. They're

4:28

not ready. I'm

4:31

so torn on this because everyone looks to me as

4:33

the ultimate petrolhead and I'll sit there and go, they're

4:35

all shit. They're not all shit. They

4:38

have a place. The most sophisticated

4:40

assessment of this that I've come across

4:43

was just a very normal person I was talking

4:45

to one day in an airport who said, surely

4:47

the solution is that you just use what's

4:49

pertinent to the energy that's easiest where you

4:51

live. I think it's the best way

4:54

of explaining it. If you live here, you

4:56

drill a hole in the ground. There's oil around

4:58

here. If you live in Iceland, you drill

5:00

a hole in the ground. There's loads of geothermal. Why

5:03

wouldn't you have an EV there? It's brilliant. It's

5:05

everywhere. It's quite a small country.

5:07

I don't need to travel large distances. But

5:09

Iceland's cold and the battery capacity, when it

5:11

gets really cold, diminishes pretty rapidly. Yeah,

5:14

but also, if you live there and you've got loads of batteries

5:16

and you have a cartridge system, we can slot them in and

5:18

out. It's doable, isn't it? Oh, okay. I

5:20

just think we need to be a bit clever about it. At

5:22

the moment, the subject's approached with, this is

5:24

good, this is evil. At the

5:27

moment, we live in a Star Wars

5:29

reality. So effectively, you're either the Rebellion

5:31

or Darth Vader and his crew. And

5:35

you will as well. I've been pushed into the corner

5:37

of being Darth Vader. I just don't think I am.

5:40

When I can, I use the train. If

5:42

I'm in a city, I quite like riding a

5:44

bicycle because it suits me. I like it. It

5:47

works. But when I want to go out on

5:49

an open road and enjoy a 911, I

5:51

want to enjoy a 911. Why can't I? I don't see... I

5:54

find it very difficult when I'm told to

5:56

do things that I don't think are rational or reasonable.

5:59

No. It's this religious ideology

6:01

that's attached to climate change. It

6:05

has that sort of fever-pitched

6:08

religious aspect to it.

6:11

And most people, when you corner them,

6:13

if they're even the real zealots, most

6:15

people really don't understand how

6:17

much data there is on the impact that human

6:20

beings have on climate change, how much is being

6:22

done in China and India that will not change

6:24

at all and is only going to get more

6:26

extreme. And what little

6:29

impact do you have, comparatively? That's a really

6:31

interesting point because it's like being a parent.

6:33

On the one hand, you can respond to

6:35

that by saying, well, if I'm going to

6:38

make no difference, I'll just carry on driving

6:40

around in my Raptor. But then it could

6:42

be suggested that that means that you

6:44

should make a difference. But

6:46

I find it really difficult that

6:49

we can't understand that

6:52

if there has to ultimately be a change at

6:54

some point, if it's rational, I don't know if

6:56

it's now or... Certainly not 2035. That's

6:58

not reasonable. No. We

7:01

need to prepare ourselves to make logical

7:03

and progressive changes. I don't

7:05

think you can mandate those changes. No,

7:07

you're quite right. First of all, we

7:09

have a long history of internal combustion

7:11

engines as recreation vehicles, and we love

7:13

them. I

7:15

think it's completely unfair. If you're still running

7:17

coal plants that power electric vehicles, which is

7:19

a fact in America, they have coal plants

7:22

that power electric vehicles, they do far more

7:24

damage to the environment. And if you tell

7:26

me I can't have an internal combustion engine

7:28

while you're doing that to power electric vehicles,

7:30

I'm going to say fuck you because fuck

7:33

you is the right thing to say because

7:35

that doesn't make any sense. There's

7:38

also this weird thing that is

7:40

attached to this. This is a business,

7:43

the green energy business. And

7:45

these people that are involved in the

7:47

green energy business have done a tremendous

7:49

job in pushing these politicians to promote

7:51

this very specific propaganda about what you

7:53

can and what you can't do and

7:55

what we need to do and where

7:57

we need to get to and what

7:59

bills we need to pass. in order

8:02

to get to this position, and they're

8:04

all profitable. And that's the

8:06

problem that nobody wants to talk about. This

8:08

is all business. And like most businesses, like

8:10

the business of vaccines or the businesses of

8:13

infrastructure or military,

8:15

there's a lot of money being exchanged,

8:18

and that's why it's being promoted. This

8:21

isn't some completely altruistic, we

8:23

need to save the world, and

8:25

this is what's wrong. It's

8:28

not true. It's not true. But I

8:30

think I agree, and there are some basic

8:32

tests you can apply to it. If

8:35

you gave most people that love

8:37

the internal combustion engine an electric vehicle that

8:39

could do exactly the same thing as

8:41

well, but be electric, they take it. But

8:44

they can't. We cannot. The

8:46

technology doesn't work at the moment. It just doesn't

8:49

sound the same. It doesn't feel the same. But

8:51

I'm talking about the non-enthusiasts, the non-enthusiasts, people like

8:53

you and I that don't care about that. If

8:55

you gave them an electric vehicle that did exactly

8:58

the same job, but could do it as well,

9:00

and could be as flexible to their needs, they'd

9:03

take it because it's as good. But

9:05

no one can do that at the moment. They don't

9:07

exist. They don't exist. It takes too long to charge.

9:09

You can't just pull over and charge. It takes hours.

9:11

And also, there are so many other industries that pollute

9:13

so heavily. Why aren't they

9:15

the subject of so much sort of pernicious

9:17

legislation? I mean, we're talking about

9:19

shipping. If you start to look

9:22

into cargo ships, what they

9:24

emit is extraordinary. Extraordinary. Absolutely extraordinary. Well,

9:26

do you know that they, I believe

9:29

it was the UN, passed some sort of

9:31

regulations on cargo ships. And because

9:33

of these regulations to make them more pollute

9:36

less, the side

9:40

effect, the unintended consequences were the ocean

9:42

got warmer, the surface of the ocean

9:44

where it was measured got warmer, because

9:47

there's no longer a pollution layer over

9:49

the ocean where these things are traveling,

9:53

which is so crazy. So

9:58

I know. more

10:00

green on Earth today than there

10:02

was in the last 100 years.

10:06

No, I didn't know that. It's because

10:08

of the carbon dioxide, because trees eat

10:11

carbon dioxide. I have to

10:13

say, I'm completely torn on it all,

10:15

because I... Some

10:17

days, but you don't have so many diesel vehicles

10:20

here, but some days I drive around in

10:22

the UK and I see a diesel throwing some shit out the

10:24

back of it, and I'm like, that's not

10:26

good. If I can see it, I don't like it.

10:28

We have a lot of diesel trucks here, and you

10:30

hit the gas on the highway and you see black

10:32

smoke. And I do want... I want

10:34

things to be different over time,

10:37

and I can see that that's the way

10:39

that we might be heading, but I

10:41

hate the fact that the timeline

10:44

is determined by politicians rather than

10:46

scientists. Exactly. And even the scientists

10:48

are all bought and paid for. That's part of the

10:50

problem too. Scientists aren't

10:52

just scientists. They're scientists that are influenced

10:54

by the university. They're influenced by whatever

10:56

research group they're a part of. There's

10:58

a lot of shenanigans going on. And

11:00

the internal combustion engine has ironically reached

11:02

a point where it's really

11:05

quite efficient. It's quite a

11:07

clever thing. If you were to

11:09

invite an alien down in that vehicle

11:11

there and try and show off what we're

11:13

capable of, you might show them a Raptor

11:15

R and go, we did that. We're

11:17

quite clever. But I think they'd be like, you're not

11:19

using gravity? Why don't you guys

11:21

just go, use gravity? Metabilly gravity. This is so

11:24

stupid. I have a Tesla. I

11:26

have a Model S Plaid, and it's

11:28

fantastic. It is so fast. It's

11:30

like a time machine. Has it got the not real

11:32

steering wheel? Yes. I

11:35

don't like that. I don't like the yoke. I ordered a

11:37

new one. I get it in October. No yoke. Regular

11:39

wheel. Wheels better. I like a

11:42

wheel better. But I get it. There's some

11:44

benefits to the yoke. It's like you get a

11:46

clear view of the dash. You basically put your

11:48

hands on there. And he's moving towards completely automated.

11:51

You can press, doo doo, you press a button. It'll drive you

11:53

just based on the navigation. Where have you stand on that? I

11:56

don't trust it. I don't know the line. I mean, it

11:58

just doesn't feel right. times I've been

12:00

in one of those things with the most advanced, they've

12:02

all got levels now haven't they? And I've let it

12:05

drive me. I'm there thinking I'm hovering. I

12:07

don't like it. It's the exact same feeling

12:09

that I got when Joe Biden was the

12:12

president. Like,

12:14

is this okay? Are we? I

12:18

just, I have to say I

12:20

don't, and in this city, there

12:22

are a lot of

12:24

jaguars with sort of radary

12:26

things on them. And

12:28

I presume they're driverless, are they? Yes,

12:30

they're driverless. I don't know what they're

12:33

called. Wavo? Waymo? Waymo? So I

12:35

view those like I do that sort of bloke

12:37

in the corner of the bar, that's just a

12:39

bit shuffly, gets up, does the one-legged walk, comes

12:41

back from the urinal with a bit of piss

12:43

down his leg. I'm like, I'm giving

12:45

you a wide berth, mate. Well, there was a bunch

12:47

of them, and they got into a sort

12:51

of a situation where they

12:53

created a traffic jam because they all came

12:55

into an intersection together and no one wanted

12:57

to move. And there was

13:00

a bunch of them, because there's quite a few of

13:02

them in the city. You'll see. I've seen several today.

13:04

Yes, they caused a traffic jam. Yeah,

13:07

I don't, I mean, probably one

13:09

day it's going to be the way to do

13:11

it, the way to get around. But I

13:14

think you can't deny people the joy

13:16

of driving, just like you can't deny

13:18

people their ability to ride horses. If

13:20

someone wants to ride a horse, they

13:22

should be able to ride a horse.

13:24

People have a long history of enjoying

13:26

horse riding. Okay, let them ride

13:28

horses. And I have a 9,

13:31

uh, 1990, I guess

13:34

it's a 93 RS

13:36

America. And it's a rare

13:38

car. Oh, I love it.

13:41

It's so beautiful. Because that was the car they

13:43

made, because you weren't allowed the real 90s for

13:46

RS, were you? They did a special one. Yes.

13:48

So this one, I had a set at the Shark

13:50

Works, and they juiced it up to somewhere around 300

13:53

horsepower, nothing crazy. But

13:56

oh my god, it's so tactile,

13:58

and it's alive. And

14:00

it just when I drive it I just I'm

14:02

smiling and I have this big smile on my

14:05

face like I'm on a fucking ride I was

14:07

gonna bring my gunter works here today, but

14:09

it's raining have you got one of

14:12

those is it got a roof or not? Yeah,

14:14

it's kind of I mean so

14:16

where do we stand on the resto mod scene? Do we

14:18

think it's gone too far or or do we believe it's

14:20

the way forward? Well,

14:22

I like the ones that look old but

14:25

drive new yeah because they're less dangerous That's

14:27

the help. That's the whole idea isn't it

14:29

really but I don't think there's anything dangerous

14:31

in that nine nine The

14:34

nine six four that's mine. That's

14:36

beautiful. It's so good. How

14:38

much power is that got? 460

14:41

and it's you know, two thousand. I've also got

14:43

to raise my hand here and say that I

14:45

work for singer So I love those too. Well,

14:48

I actually have a little contract with them So

14:50

I've got I've actually professionally got to say I

14:52

ignore that vehicle But

14:55

actually I think I

14:57

love the rest of mod thing I think it it

14:59

we might be at peak resto mod Yeah, because so

15:01

much of it going on But it does it

15:04

segways into a point I wanted to make about

15:06

the the way we're traveling One of

15:08

the ways I find to appease myself if I do wake

15:10

up some days and think I'm pretty wasteful individual or

15:12

whatever It is, you know, even I have moments where I

15:14

think Just have a look at yourself in

15:16

the mirror Just buy a used car

15:19

then you don't you're not having another one built

15:21

There are so many great old cars out there,

15:23

right? I just go out and buy some and

15:25

it's ten years old go and look at a

15:27

ten-year-old AMG what a machine Yeah, and if you

15:29

do that's a vehicle that's already been built, right?

15:31

It's it's it's wastefulness has already been absorbed into

15:33

this weird world. We live in go and buy

15:35

it Yeah, it's there for you with its 500

15:38

horsepower. It's ready to go. Yeah That's

15:40

the greenest thing you can do is to

15:42

go and buy an old Ferrari You'll

15:44

do no miles in it because you'll never

15:47

use it because it might work now and again It's

15:49

the greenest thing you can do in your life

15:51

is buy a used Ferrari or a Lamborghini, right?

15:54

It's just best thing so but no one seems to

15:56

express it this way and the other way is to

15:58

rest a mod Yes So, you

16:00

know, buy something and make it, make

16:03

the car that you wish new car

16:05

makers built now but they can't because

16:07

they've all been drawn into this need

16:09

to spend billions on these electric SUVs.

16:12

There's the other thing that's ironic, they're

16:15

all SUVs. So you're telling me

16:17

we've got to have these efficient new EVs, but you're

16:19

going to make them three tons, shouldn't

16:21

they be that big? Not only that, there's a problem

16:23

with guardrails. Jesus. They're too heavy.

16:26

They go right through the guardrails like butter. I saw

16:28

that on Instagram too. It

16:30

just goes straight through it. Right through. Yeah.

16:33

They're twice as wet. I do think that people

16:36

love cars. Just look to old stuff. There's

16:39

so much of it out there. Yeah, and

16:41

they're so good. I have a 2005 M3.

16:45

It's an E46. Peak car. Peak

16:48

car. It's such a great car.

16:51

It's not too powerful, but it's so

16:53

delightful. It doesn't have

16:55

a radio. It's got cloth seats. Cloth

16:58

seats. That is rare. Yeah, cloth seats. I

17:00

just bought the V10. So you

17:02

had the E60 V10 M5 over here. Crazy

17:05

machine. We had the Touring in the

17:07

UK. They built a Touring, which is

17:09

a state car, or a station wagon.

17:12

And I've got one of those that I bought earlier in

17:14

the year. And I'm just... Do you know

17:16

what? I paid £27,000 for it. I

17:19

probably spent more than that on it already doing,

17:21

just making it right. But actually,

17:24

the journey of just reconditioning and renewing

17:26

something like that to use for the

17:28

next five years, I find more interesting

17:30

than most new performance cars now. Is

17:32

that a sad statement or not? No,

17:35

no, because there's something about

17:37

seeing the improvement on a

17:39

vehicle. Getting a vehicle and

17:41

going, hey, you know, these suspension is OK, but

17:43

these shocks are like, I could adjust this, and

17:45

maybe this, and maybe I can get a little

17:48

wider wheel in this. What

17:50

else can I do? I'm so much of

17:52

one of my favorite colleagues, Mr LeBlanc, because

17:54

Matt is a much bigger car guy than

17:56

anyone realizes. We actually grew up in the

17:58

same town. Did you? Yeah, I had

18:01

friends that knew him, but I

18:03

never met him. I've still never met him.

18:05

He's a wonderful man and he's a brilliant

18:07

car guy. He would agree with you. He's

18:09

like that. He can never quite leave something

18:11

alone. Yeah. And with

18:14

motorcycles as well. Motorcycles, he

18:17

had a bizarre... Working with him was wonderful, by the way.

18:19

I loved him to bits. I'd like to make another TV

18:21

show with him. I got

18:24

one of these gangs that steals motorcycles in

18:28

the UK, got me. So I was doing

18:30

a voiceover in the center of London. I probably told...

18:32

I might have written this story. I don't know if

18:34

I told it or not. And

18:36

I had a new Ducati I'd bought. I like

18:38

bikes. I'm not very good on them, but I

18:40

like bikes. And I was trying to get better.

18:42

And Matt's a very good rider. And I had

18:44

this Ducati Panigale anniversary with all

18:46

the... It's the kind of shit you buy when

18:48

you've just got a TV job and you think

18:51

you're the dog's bollocks. And looking back, it's fucking

18:53

embarrassing. So I've parked it up in

18:55

Soho, right in the center of London where

18:57

the voiceover studio was. And

19:00

I was a bit early. So I was

19:02

milling about wearing my leathers still. And

19:04

I saw this bike moving past me. And I thought, that's a

19:06

nice bike. Oh shit, that's my bike.

19:09

And I saw these guys all in black

19:11

with stuff, sort

19:14

of tinted visors, black

19:16

everything. What they do is they basically

19:18

angle grind off the

19:21

steering lock, the male part that goes into the headstock,

19:23

the angle grind that off, break the steering, and then

19:26

they have a moped behind or something quite powerful with

19:28

a leg out and another guy and push your bike

19:30

away in neutral. And they get it around the

19:32

corner into a van and away it goes. Wow. And

19:35

they did it right in front of me. And so I

19:37

walked up and I was like, this is my

19:39

bike. I'm small, not a very big guy. I

19:42

don't present any kind of a threat. And there was

19:44

three of them. And I challenged

19:46

them and I said, this is not on. And

19:49

I started swearing and one of them had a

19:51

hammer, claw hammer, and we had a

19:53

tussle when the bike fell over. And

19:56

as the bike fell over, I'm like, well, that's wrecked that then, hasn't

19:58

it? Because I could just see the fairing squashed. And

20:00

then the guy tried to hit me with the hammer and

20:02

I was like, I remember screaming You

20:05

try to steal my bike and now you're trying to hit me with the hammer

20:07

and then And then they left and

20:10

I was really shocked. I'd never had anything like that happen to

20:12

me so I picked the

20:14

bike up and I walked it down to the

20:17

voiceover studio And I

20:19

rolled it up and I walked in and Matt was there it's

20:21

a long story and I said, um, well He

20:23

went how are you? I said well, I someone's just tried to steal

20:26

my bike and they tried to hit me with a hammer And he

20:28

came outside and he looked at the

20:30

bike. He's got the most lovely deadpan voice and

20:32

he goes You want

20:35

to get those to carry performance levers? Those are too

20:37

long Trying

20:43

to mod it need even care you almost got

20:46

killed by a hammer because he's like you he's

20:48

like obviously, you know tough He's a big boy

20:50

and he's like he's like he's fine. But those

20:52

levers are too long. They don't suit that bike

20:54

Oh those levers are too long Yeah,

20:57

I I think this the mod thing is is

20:59

really important to me. I love it. I can't

21:01

I cannot leave stuff alone Yeah,

21:04

I enjoy messing around with stuff,

21:06

too. It's it's it's it's

21:08

part of the fun of the older

21:10

cars you know particularly

21:13

like car like I have a Nissan

21:17

GT-R and that is 35

21:19

Yeah That is the ultimate mod car because

21:22

they've been around for so long and exactly

21:24

the same form and there's such an aftermarket

21:26

And everybody just goes crazy find me a

21:28

standard one that don't exist. Yeah, it's very

21:30

hard stock R35 the unicorn Yeah,

21:33

very hard to find how much power does yours

21:35

have well, I got a Nismo I got last

21:37

year's model the Nismo So I got it new

21:39

was still laying around and but I got it

21:41

because I know you can fuck around with them

21:43

So I'm never gonna get rid of it I'm

21:45

gonna keep it forever and I'm gonna juice it

21:47

up to probably a thousand horsepower something stupid And

21:49

if they make another one will have to be

21:51

a hybrid it'll have to be yeah Yeah,

21:54

it'll never be the same. There's this I

21:57

mean they're about to do that to Porsches probably they're

21:59

about to do They're already doing that with the m5

22:01

right the new m5 is a hybrid. I've driven that

22:04

the new one. Yeah Yeah, I'm not sure whether I

22:06

can say I've driven it or not Say

22:08

it. I'll probably get I think I signed a

22:10

piece of paper saying I'd get sued for 60,000 euros if I

22:12

said nothing it's um Yeah

22:17

There's a point in this in this process Well,

22:20

you have to acknowledge that the the main

22:22

criticism of Hybridity in

22:24

cars is mass is weight. Right? So

22:27

everyone says it's too heavy But

22:29

for me mass is just a number unless you

22:31

can feel it. Okay, it's

22:33

really important You can't just criticize something because

22:35

it's heavy We're you can't because actually it

22:37

might it might affect the way the car

22:40

drives But you have to drive it to

22:42

tell that first that's where I have

22:44

a job So that's and

22:46

I won't talk about the m5 because I think I might get sued

22:49

But I could tell you now the BMW

22:51

m2 is is a small performance

22:53

car that came out 7,250 kilograms

22:56

my friend Tom Segura had one of those that

22:58

he sent off to get juiced up Yeah, get

23:00

a dine-in did it or yeah I forget who

23:02

did it well the new one came out and

23:04

it was 300 kilograms heavier than the last one

23:06

and the whole In the internet had a massive

23:09

collective baby and went. Oh, it's fucking ruined. I

23:11

ran one for six months It was better than

23:14

the last M2. Of course it was really yes

23:16

because someone German with a massive forehead and a

23:18

white coat Made it

23:20

that way because these are really clever people

23:22

right and actually Mass only matters

23:24

if you can feel it. So if you drive a

23:26

car and you can feel it's too heavy fine I'm

23:29

with you But that's and that's the

23:31

clearest to what I think about the new m5 Judge

23:34

it get in it and judge it before

23:36

you before you actually or drive it before

23:38

you judge it and that's what it looks

23:40

Yeah, it looks good. It's a 700 and

23:42

something horsepower Sedan with

23:44

a BMW badge look at 727. Why is

23:46

that coming out? The

23:49

launch is at the end of this year. Mmm. It

23:52

is it's a beast I

23:55

could only imagine I had an m5. I miss it Return

23:58

of the v8 one The e39

24:00

yeah, I had it in 2015

24:07

or something. What was that? Which which one would

24:09

that be? That would have been the v10 wasn't

24:11

a v10 Was it not was the one after

24:13

the oh, that would be the f10. Yeah f10m.

24:16

Yeah, I'm a real nerd I loved it.

24:18

It's a good car. It was great. I'm

24:20

actually it an M car Should

24:23

be and your e46 is that is the definition

24:25

this an M car should be a car that

24:27

the non car nerd can't spot it From the

24:29

normal one, but the car nerd can spot it

24:31

just for the camber a

24:34

bit shoulder You can see an M car you

24:36

and I can see an M car from a

24:38

mile little hips But a civilian cannot see right

24:40

an M car from a model especially need 46

24:42

does such a plain-looking car That's a gorgeous car.

24:44

We actually had someone reach out to Jamie. That's

24:47

how I bought it because we were talking about

24:49

how great there I was like I'd love to

24:51

find a low mile one and this one is

24:53

super low miles I forget what it is, but

24:55

it's really low my M tech cloth is rare

24:58

Yeah, I look at the cars. I missed out

25:00

on there was a white manual M tech on

25:02

18 inch wheels He 46 m3 and

25:04

I why I didn't buy I don't know But

25:06

then I suppose I could say

25:09

that about a thousand cars that I wish I'd bought or

25:11

I hadn't or I hadn't sold I wish you never sold

25:13

that green Porsche Do you know what that

25:16

I know who owns it? Yeah, it appears

25:18

in the UK now and again and I see

25:20

it It was a cool thing and but I

25:23

had to realize early on that I couldn't afford to

25:25

keep all these things But that thing was a masterpiece.

25:27

It was lovely. But but look where that was done

25:29

by Tuttle Yeah, right and look where they are now.

25:31

They just come back from Pebble Beach with this GT

25:33

one Amazing-looking thing which you

25:35

might have seen you Google GT one Doesn't

25:38

he have a car that goes to? 10,000

25:42

11 11,000 RPMs. That's so nuts. Yeah, it's a

25:44

it's a lovely thing that he developed with a

25:46

friend of ours called Philip Kedori Who obviously

25:49

runs the quail and it's a

25:51

case. Okay has it's a very good name, isn't it? It's a

25:53

911 K Developed

25:56

by a guy called Kedori K for Kedori and it revs

25:58

to 11,000 911k. It's

26:00

my favorite car name ever. I've driven it.

26:03

There's a video on line of that in

26:05

this gold thing. How is it? You

26:07

need to sit down after driving it because it's

26:10

just it's just so visceral.

26:13

It's one of the few cars that you're aware of just

26:15

how fast that crank is spinning and You

26:18

have to keep it revving and it just keeps going and your

26:20

eyes says it's gone to eight You've got to stop now I'm

26:22

gonna have bits of metal coming out the side of the engine,

26:24

but it it never does And

26:26

it's so light everything's carbon so it's

26:28

it's about 900 kilograms Wow. Yeah, you'd

26:31

love that. That's really that's very basic

26:34

Intravenous performance that is how light did you get

26:36

your green card down to it? Is that it?

26:39

That's what they've just done. So Tuttle did the

26:41

GT what he's just launched that at Pebble Beach

26:44

Look at that. That looks I hate the wheels But

26:47

again, I got to be careful. I work for singer.

26:49

I love singer I love singer amazing, but that's my

26:51

friend Richards just done that can you get me a

26:54

picture of a singer? Why are the wheels so gross?

26:57

Those are because they're supposed to look like 80s

26:59

wheels from Le Mans. Yeah, let that go Yeah,

27:02

I think you might be right but a hundred

27:04

percent right disgusting

27:07

The 911 K is it is an amazing

27:09

thing and maybe If

27:12

I was Porsche or another carmaker, I'd

27:14

be starting to cry foul Because

27:16

what's happened is the resto mod thing

27:20

is actually a movement that reminds

27:22

carmakers That they're not being given

27:24

or being offered a fair

27:26

crack at the whip now Because they because

27:28

you can come along you and I could establish

27:31

the monkey and Joe car company tomorrow Right and

27:33

we could find a car we could say right we're

27:35

gonna make an e46m3 We're

27:38

gonna get we're gonna buy a hundred good

27:40

e46m3 and we're gonna turn them into The

27:43

Joe and monkey m3 and we're

27:45

gonna sell them for three hundred thousand dollars. They're

27:47

gonna have a nice new interior They're not gonna

27:49

stray too far from the original philosophy of the

27:51

car Everyone's gonna love them and we wouldn't have

27:53

to meet any kind of crash legislation Smog

27:56

would be according to the vehicle age

27:59

in Europe there's even less to do. It comes

28:01

under very low volume approval. You don't have

28:03

to do anything. We don't have to meet

28:05

any emissions regs really in Europe. You

28:07

can do what you want. But if you're a car, if

28:09

you're called BMW, you cannot make

28:12

that car. Right. And I'm not sure that's

28:14

fair. Right, like what RUF

28:16

does. Yeah, so they don't even, that's not even

28:18

really a Porsche. Well, it has its own chassis

28:20

plate. It's a really gray area, but I think

28:22

it's unfair on the car companies in many ways,

28:25

because they can't go out and do that. Right,

28:27

they can't make a Restomant. Porsche

28:30

could not make a Singer. Well, they

28:33

could. But they could sell it.

28:35

They'd have to establish a new co, or

28:38

they'd have to buy a company. But

28:40

could Porsche make Restomants of

28:43

their vehicles? I think

28:45

they potentially could, but

28:47

they'd be terrified, I suspect, of the potential

28:51

litigation. Right. You know,

28:53

because if one of them went into a wall, Right. you

28:55

know, you'll suddenly, you get to sue Porsche. Right.

28:58

So, especially if you're selling something

29:00

like one of those old Widowmakers, and

29:03

people don't understand that, I have a

29:05

2007 GT3 RS, and

29:10

it's still, like around corners, you let

29:12

off the gas, it'll whip around on

29:14

you. Yeah. The new ones don't

29:17

really do that that much. The new ones are

29:19

much better. They've got, well, they've got this rear

29:21

steer on them, which definitely helps, but

29:23

they'll still rotate. Yeah, just the engine

29:26

out the back. You've had

29:28

that to an old design. It's

29:31

less prominent now, because tire technology's

29:34

moved on so much. Right. Remember

29:36

the first time I got to drive a lot of these things? I

29:39

didn't quite understand the

29:41

Widowmaker tag. Because?

29:44

They had new tires. They had these new tires.

29:47

Tires are everything. I'll tell you a top

29:49

gear story, it's fairly interesting.

29:53

My colleague, who, called Paddy McGinnis, who's

29:55

one of the co-hosts, who's

29:58

claimed to fame for me in America, is... He

30:00

had to be subtitled in America for Top Gear

30:02

because his accent is so broad from the north

30:04

of England he had subtitles Watching

30:07

Peaky Blinders. Yeah, no it's worse than

30:09

that anyhow He crashed a

30:11

Lamborghini when we were filming and it was all

30:13

over the press in the UK Oh, it helped

30:16

it was read like proper dog knob red Lamborghini

30:18

goes off the road anyhow at

30:20

the end of it all The

30:23

cars on a low loader and I look at the tires The

30:26

20 years old. Oh god. Yeah, well,

30:28

that's they've been borrowed for the job

30:30

You know, you say old tire technology

30:33

matched with age as well. He's terrible

30:35

That's the story with the guy from

30:37

Fast and the Furious. What's his name

30:39

Paul Walker Paul Walker? That's

30:42

the story with him. They had old tires on that

30:44

car Well, Patty gets so Patty gets eviscerated in the

30:46

press because you can't drive and everything else I

30:48

could have been in that car had a crashed it. I

30:50

can drive a bit anyone You cannot

30:53

and that's that if you get in these

30:55

old cars with old tires on them, they

30:57

have nothing. Yeah, absolutely nothing It's incredible how

30:59

much the technology has come along in that

31:02

regard I'd say Michelin

31:04

at its best is you know, it's

31:07

some of its like witchcraft Maybe

31:09

if you go if you get in

31:11

a new Porsche GT3 RS now the

31:14

tire they've developed for that probably has four

31:16

compounds across it You

31:19

know so the the high wear stuff

31:21

where it needs the grip. They're so

31:23

clever They really are the

31:25

performance they add to the vehicle. No one knows

31:27

how come no one can figure out how to

31:30

make a tire without air so

31:34

It's a really really interesting point They must have done

31:36

it must for me It comes under the same heading

31:39

is someone must have made a light bulb that you

31:41

never need to replace But why would they

31:43

make it? Well the tire without air

31:45

thing for safety purposes There's a lot of reasons

31:47

why you would want a tire that I mean,

31:49

I know they did make them They do have

31:51

this tire that looks like us looks like a

31:53

sort of spring, you know that I didn't have

31:55

shoe that has the sort of Yeah

36:00

I always used to have a radio in my little room at the

36:02

test track where I was sitting inside so I could

36:04

hear what was going on And I heard

36:07

someone say this has been a real accident here

36:09

the cars upside down So

36:12

I ran to the window looked out and he wasn't moving. So I

36:15

thought he was I thought he was dead I

36:17

assumed he was then he moved I

36:20

can tell you now that he if it Unless

36:23

he's a physical specimen Fred. He's a big guy

36:26

Six foot five six foot six strong and

36:28

it any if he wasn't so strong you

36:30

wouldn't have survived. He's a he's

36:32

a great advert for Physical

36:35

strength and conditioning because if you hadn't been that

36:37

strong, you know just snapped his neck He'd be

36:39

dead. So I can't believe he's I couldn't believe

36:41

he survived and that sort of that That

36:44

moment of realization that

36:46

he'd survives has kind of defined

36:48

my thoughts on the subject since Because

36:51

I believe that anything after that is a bit

36:53

of a bonus, you know, he should be dead

36:55

really And the

36:57

fact that he survived it is remarkable and it's given

36:59

him and his family a chance to move on Under

37:03

very difficult circumstances. So that day

37:07

Was very difficult Made

37:09

even more difficult by the fact that the

37:11

build up to that particular shoot I

37:14

knew that we were at the last minute. I

37:16

knew we were using a Morgan three-wheeler. It's a

37:18

very it's a difficult car You know,

37:20

it's by just the name tells you its physics is

37:22

complicated It doesn't mean it's inherently dangerous. You just drive

37:24

it according to what it is. You have to be

37:27

aware of its limitations and I

37:29

think that that

37:31

really was difficult there were and you need experience There

37:34

were two people that had driven a Morgan three-wheeler before

37:37

Present that day me and someone else a pro

37:40

driver and we were sitting inside at that time

37:42

No one had asked us anything about

37:44

the car. They just gone on and shot it without us And

37:47

I think If I'm looking in the mirror,

37:49

I find it very difficult Even

37:51

now that Andrew who I

37:53

love to basic lovely, ma'am He

37:57

he was a pro cricket player. He was

38:00

He wasn't an automotive guy. But

38:03

he was a real enthusiast. He was great, much like

38:05

you. He loved cars. And he

38:08

would always come up to me before

38:10

a shoot and say, tell

38:12

me how it is. I've got all the advice. Give me

38:14

the last bit of advice on what I should do, what

38:17

I should expect. And

38:19

that was the first, because of the call times

38:21

that day, that was the first

38:23

time we'd never had the chance to talk about how

38:26

he might approach a difficult vehicle. And that was the

38:28

one day that it went wrong. I find that very

38:30

difficult to live with. And I feel partly responsible, because

38:32

I didn't get the chance to talk to him. But

38:36

my situation is nothing compared to his. Anyhow,

38:41

the bit that I find really difficult is that in

38:44

the aftermath of that accident, the

38:46

show was put on hold. Andrew

38:49

had to recover from, frankly, awful injuries

38:51

and has done so, but

38:55

profound injuries. We all kept

38:57

quiet. We said nothing. And I said nothing, because

38:59

I wanted to look after him. It wasn't my

39:01

story, was it? I

39:03

was caught up in the collateral damage. I lost

39:05

my job immediately, because they canceled the show when

39:08

my contract was up. So suddenly I haven't got

39:10

a job. But again, you look in the mirror

39:12

and think I'm alive. I've got three beautiful children.

39:14

I'm not in Fred's position. Andrew

39:16

and Fred are the same person. Sorry, that's his nickname. And

39:20

I just sort of got

39:23

my head down. But

39:25

I had seen this coming. There

39:29

was a big inquiry, a lot of

39:31

soul searching. The BBC's good at that. But

39:34

what was never spoken about was that three

39:36

months before the accident, I'd

39:38

gone to the BBC and said, unless

39:42

you change something, someone's going

39:44

to die on this show.

39:47

So I went to them. I went to the BBC. And

39:50

I told them of my concerns from what I'd seen. As

39:52

the most experienced driver on the show by a mile,

39:55

I said, if we carry on, at the

39:57

very least, we're going to have a serious injury at the

39:59

very end. worse for going on fatality. Let's

40:02

explain to people that aren't aware of

40:04

what Top Gear is and how Top

40:06

Gear works because I know there's a

40:08

lot of Americans that never watch the

40:10

show. You guys do a lot of

40:12

really crazy stunts with automobiles, not necessarily

40:14

just cars but big trucks and all

40:16

kinds of crazy things and some

40:19

of them are quite ridiculous. Yeah, there

40:22

was a bit of an arms race between

40:25

us and maybe the other big car show, the Grand

40:27

Tour at the time to go ever more stupid and

40:30

we did do some big stunts and a lot of the time...

40:33

And the Grand Tour is the original cast

40:35

of Top Gear, Jeremy Koff's and Richard May.

40:37

In their Amazon show, which sadly they've just

40:39

ended, great show. So

40:43

and also I'm... James Mayron, sorry. Yeah,

40:45

yeah, I'm not of the health and

40:47

safety world, I'm not

40:49

risk averse, I love a bit of risk

40:51

and I also absolutely believe that

40:53

if you enter into a show like Top Gear you know what

40:55

you're taking on. Right. I believe

40:58

that there is no such thing as

41:00

great risk free television like that.

41:02

You just got to... You know,

41:04

I just turn up and I assess what I see

41:06

and I do what I'm comfortable with and

41:08

I want to make great television, that's it. And

41:10

if sometimes it got a bit sketchy, so

41:13

be it. We've all done that. You know, that's the way the

41:15

world lives. And I think what

41:19

happened with Top Gear was I

41:22

saw repeatedly too many

41:24

times my two co-hosts who didn't have

41:26

the experience I had in cars. This is the critical

41:29

thing. I'm qualified to make those decisions

41:31

because I've done it a long time. They weren't. One

41:33

of them is an active comedian, the other guy is a pro

41:35

cricket player. Brilliant entertainers, they were

41:37

great hosts. But their roles were to

41:39

make people laugh and my role was to tell people what

41:41

cars were like. And

41:44

all too often, towards the last year, I

41:46

saw situations where it got

41:49

too dangerous and it culminated actually in us

41:51

being in Thailand. We went

41:53

from Padia in Thailand and we

41:55

did a go-kart race down a hill in

41:57

just compacted mud on wooden go-karts with no

41:59

engine. And I just looked

42:01

at him and I said, this is just, so it's not

42:03

a question of whether we get injured, it's how injured we

42:06

get. So just have an ambulance at the bottom, because something's

42:08

going to go wrong. Sure enough, I broke something in my

42:10

hand, broke a finger or what have you. And

42:12

I just thought, which sounds ridiculous from

42:14

your background, because you're super tough guys,

42:16

but it hurt. No, I don't want to break my

42:19

fingers. I didn't, and also he was

42:21

a shit piece of television. So I always said,

42:23

I don't mind breaking my hand if we get

42:25

a BAFTA for it, or

42:27

an award. But this was just a shit

42:29

skit, and I ended up damaged. And

42:31

it went on too much. So anyhow, I went to the BBC and

42:33

I said, I want to have a meeting with the

42:35

head of health and safety, because this is not good. And

42:40

what's really killed me is that no

42:42

one's ever really acknowledged the fact that I called it beforehand.

42:46

And it's very difficult to live with that

42:49

initially for me. When I knew, I thought

42:51

I'd done the right thing. I'm not very good at that.

42:53

I normally just go with the flow. But

42:55

I saw this coming. I

42:57

thought I did the right thing. I went to the BBC. And

43:01

I found out really that no one had taken me

43:03

very seriously. I did a bit of digging

43:05

afterwards. The conversation I had

43:07

with those people was sort of acknowledged.

43:09

Then they tried to shut me down a bit.

43:12

And then they didn't look after me at all. They just

43:14

left me to rot. And even

43:18

now, I'm totally perplexed by the whole thing. To

43:22

actually say to an organization, this

43:24

is going to go wrong, and then be

43:26

there the day that it goes wrong is

43:28

a position I never expected to be in. And I never

43:30

want to be in again. It's

43:33

strange and pretty

43:35

heartbreaking in many ways. I love that

43:38

show. So did the conversation between you

43:40

and the network completely stop after the

43:42

accident? They

43:44

just sort of left me to sweat, really.

43:47

I just didn't really, I just sat in where

43:49

I live and drank whiskey. I

43:51

didn't have much contact with them at all. Everything went quiet.

43:54

They had two inquiries into

43:57

the accident commissioned, neither of

43:59

which I had. access to. I pushed very hard to

44:01

have access to the second one and saw some of

44:03

it. And I had this, this

44:06

is one of the most bizarre interactions I've had. I

44:08

sat down with someone from the BBC who

44:11

was going to talk me through bits of

44:13

the second inquiry into the accident. And

44:15

I'd already been told that I no longer had a job. So

44:18

I'd have been told that Top Gear was done. And

44:21

at the beginning of it, he said to me, I won't

44:24

name him, he said, I want to thank you so

44:26

much for taking part in this because it's really going

44:28

to help us as an organisation going forwards. I said,

44:30

well, it doesn't really help me.

44:32

I've lost my job. And

44:36

I'm always reminded of that

44:38

old adage from a very brilliant BBC

44:40

comedy show, which was never

44:42

commission an inquiry that you don't know the outcome of

44:44

in the first place. So

44:47

I don't know the whole thing. The

44:50

whole situation was ridiculous. And

44:53

I've never told anyone that. And I think I

44:56

want to tell people that I did because I

44:58

bit of me thought as the experienced

45:00

driver, the members of the public think

45:02

that I didn't do enough to protect

45:05

Andrew. But I and

45:07

and Paddy as well, they both had they both

45:09

experienced other incidents on that show that I think were

45:11

unacceptable. And that's coming

45:13

as someone who loves a bit of risk. You know, if

45:15

you and I went outside now and there were two quad

45:17

bikes, I'd happily roll it for

45:19

a laugh with you. I'm that guy. And

45:21

even me as that guy thought it had

45:23

gone too far, which I

45:26

think is important to say. Right. Well,

45:28

there's the problem with those shows is they

45:31

always want to keep pushing the limit. And

45:33

it's generally the producers who don't quite understand

45:35

the limitations of the vehicles. And

45:37

not yes, they don't have the experience of

45:40

of what it's like to actually be in control of that

45:42

vehicle or what is possible. Right. So

45:44

also often it's can you just do that? Right. And then

45:46

you want to be a crowd pleaser. You know, you you

45:48

want to be the guy that can do it. We had

45:50

that on Fear Factor. Yeah. When I was

45:52

hosting Fear Factor, there was a couple of

45:55

times where I was like, what the

45:57

fuck are we doing, especially the second

45:59

seat? Like Fear Factor started in 2001 and

46:01

went to 2007 and then we came back again in 2011 and

46:07

we only did six episodes and they

46:09

tried to make it just really ramped

46:11

up. And when it was cancelled, it

46:13

was actually cancelled because people had to drink donkey sperm.

46:16

Yeah. Which was pretty minor

46:19

and consider it, I mean it's disgusting but

46:22

it wasn't anything that was going to

46:24

risk anyone's lives. But I was really

46:26

feeling like if this keeps going, the

46:28

stunts are so spectacular and so big

46:31

we're launching cars through moving trains. There

46:33

was a moving train and then the

46:35

train had all these cardboard boxes in

46:37

it and we launch a car off

46:39

a ramp like sideways and it goes

46:41

through the train. You have to time

46:43

it just right so you don't hit

46:46

the car into one of the big

46:48

metal. And someone in the car? Yeah, driving it,

46:50

yeah. Hell yeah. My

46:54

experience of that now is that if

46:57

you establish really big stunts that

47:00

have big vision and are

47:02

ambitious, they tend to come

47:04

with them a level of rigor that means they

47:06

are executed well. The

47:08

difficult area is the kind of just

47:11

being at a test track with a smaller crew

47:13

and someone says give that a go, that's when

47:15

it goes wrong. Because no

47:17

one's really thought about it. They're saying, well,

47:19

we've done the risk assessment but just give that a

47:21

go while you're I think

47:24

that goes wrong. And also my experience and

47:26

this is why everyone that's shot with me

47:28

will have been reminded of this now and

47:30

again. Close a play. End

47:33

of the day. That's when it goes wrong.

47:35

If you're at a test track, it's just, you know,

47:37

the lights coming down, there's 10 minutes to go and

47:39

the director says, just do that. I go, no, because

47:42

everyone's tired. Someone's going

47:44

to have ignored the lockdown on the circuit. There'll

47:46

be someone coming driving the other way with the

47:48

coffee cups over there. Or it's the end of

47:51

the day. Right. If it's six

47:53

o'clock, five thirty, I'm gone. Right. Not because I'm

47:55

workshaft. I'll stay around and pick stuff up. Right.

47:58

But don't, the end of the day when you start rushing. And

48:01

I think there was an element of that

48:03

day at Dunsfold, that was a shoot

48:06

that was rushed for me.

48:08

That was, and I know that that was a

48:10

we need to use this day shoot. That's another

48:12

one that's another red flag for me. We've

48:14

got a day at a track, we need to fill it. Well,

48:18

that's, you've reverse engineered that, you know?

48:20

Right. Your priorities are all

48:22

ready to fill something up. And

48:24

I look back, some of the stuff that we did on top here,

48:26

I look back that was dangerous, visually

48:28

dangerous, and definitely was

48:30

in practical terms. I'm very

48:33

proud of, because we executed it well. Like

48:35

Andrew, Fred Vintoff went off a

48:37

dam in a Metro and did a car bungee. Which

48:41

is extraordinary piece of footage. You can see

48:43

it, it was just amazing film, but it

48:45

was rigorous. It was done properly. That has

48:47

amazing stunt crew that did it. I

48:49

mean, I couldn't have done it. It was

48:51

brave and it was a really memorable piece

48:54

of television. That, what a legend. And

48:58

he's got me in his ear. He sat like

49:00

that for 45 minutes. Look how far down that

49:02

thing goes. Oh God. And

49:05

I think I'm very proud

49:08

of what the team did there. And Andrew was

49:10

magnificent to fuck that.

49:12

Can you imagine? Fuck that. Look

49:14

how far down that is. Because if it goes wrong, you're

49:16

dead. Yeah, and he's got that chirpy little shit in his

49:19

ear as well. I think,

49:21

and there's other stuff that we did that I

49:23

can't understand what we were doing. So we also

49:25

did, you won't find this, I think they've removed

49:27

it from YouTube. But there's a, oh

49:30

my God. How about that? That's

49:32

so insane. How about that?

49:34

Look at when it goes over itself like that.

49:37

Oh my God. That is

49:39

so ridiculous. And

49:42

then the yank. But

49:47

that, you know, when I said to

49:49

you earlier, I've been in my regrets doing it. I look at

49:51

that and I think, what

49:53

a thing to have been part of. It's

49:56

ridiculous. Yeah. And

49:58

I'm proud of that stuff. One thing we did

50:00

do, which again

50:02

on reflection was just madness. There

50:06

are these guys that go to motorcycle meets

50:08

and shows in the UK that have these

50:10

titanium skid plates on their boots. And they

50:12

hold onto the back of the bike, you

50:14

might have seen them, and they go really

50:17

fast and the sparks go out

50:19

the back. And

50:23

we decided we'd be good if we did this. So

50:25

each of us had a vehicle we were using or

50:28

you were the person that was pushing that vehicle.

50:30

You're an advocate for that car in the film.

50:33

And I think I had the new Land Rover Defender, you've

50:35

seen those. I had a short wheelbase Defender. And I had

50:37

to hang off the back of it wearing these, we had

50:39

to wear these shoes. The

50:41

big problem with some of these ones is that Andrew was

50:44

so brave, he would go first and set such a

50:46

high benchmark. You'd have to go, shit, I need to

50:48

really go here. So he went out and did like,

50:50

I thought he'd do 40 miles. No, I think he did 75 miles. But

50:53

hang on the back, wearing these titanium shoes. Anyhow,

50:57

Paddy gets in and tries to go really fast

50:59

and he falls off. And

51:02

he's okay, but he could, someone goes, Paddy's

51:04

over. I looked left, the ambulance driver was

51:06

having a cigarette at our

51:08

end of the runway and he was two miles down there. And

51:11

that was one of those moments where I thought, this

51:14

has got a bit loose, you know? If

51:16

you're going to do these things, that guy should have

51:18

been running parallel. Because those, and I didn't like that.

51:22

About two minutes of two miles, it's a long time.

51:24

I know. Although the end of that was quite, I

51:26

can give you some levity there. I

51:28

did my run, I didn't get quite as close as Paddy,

51:30

I did nearly 80 miles now or something.

51:33

And I fell off at the end and it hurt a bit.

51:35

And I got in the back of the crew car, which I

51:37

think was another Land Rover. And I

51:39

was sitting there thinking, this smells terrible. Have I

51:42

done something wrong here? A really acrid smell. Not

51:44

from the colon, but definitely I thought this is not

51:46

a good smell. Like a chemical smell?

51:48

Yeah, and then I was told to get out. And

51:51

what happened was the shoes were red hot. And

51:53

I'd got in the car and they just melted straight through

51:55

the mat, straight through the carpet. And it

51:57

was just smoldering on fire. I looked

51:59

like a shit. Marvel superhero. Yeah

52:03

I think I'm

52:06

very happy and

52:08

proud to have done Top Gear but

52:11

I'm so sad at the way it ended. That's

52:15

the ultimate. No one had control

52:17

of that that day. That's what the insurance industry calls an

52:19

act of God whether you believe in him or not. But

52:24

what happened afterwards was really sad

52:26

because I've arrived here you've got your crew

52:28

you know you've got your people they

52:30

were my people and from that day I've never

52:33

really spoken to them. The

52:35

producers everyone else no one really it

52:37

just it just went like that

52:39

bang done and that was that

52:41

was very hard because I

52:44

just couldn't believe it had happened so I

52:46

was they're just gone and

52:48

you spend five six years of your life more in

52:51

daily contact with people and they just stops. I

52:53

was always torn on those type of

52:55

moments on Top Gear because I just

52:58

wanted to watch car reviews I wanted

53:00

to watch people have fun with cars

53:02

but then for the casual people you

53:05

have to do something stupid like bungee jump

53:07

off with a car off the side of a dam and

53:10

it's like I don't I'm not

53:12

interested maybe it's because I hosted fear factor for so

53:14

long I've seen so many things like that they're not

53:16

interesting to me I want I want to hear a

53:19

car enthusiast rave

53:21

about the fun they're having while they're

53:23

driving an automobile. Maybe you should produce

53:26

a car show I've got an idea I'll pitch it to you

53:28

afterwards but you're quite right.

53:30

There's plenty of market for that.

53:32

There is and actually this is the

53:34

country for it yeah maybe in Europe

53:36

is less but I know

53:38

that when we did geeky car stuff that was

53:40

very you know for you and I the numbers

53:43

did that and the moment

53:45

you did something hyperbolic and ridiculous the

53:47

numbers did that. But what about online? Online

53:50

is totally different. Yes right so that's

53:52

where it belongs like what

53:54

where I found about you is online yeah you know and

53:56

I don't remember what was the first video that I watched

53:58

of you but I do So

1:40:01

this is the part where you say it's great. But what if I

1:40:03

think it's shit? Right. But

1:40:05

they, I can understand why the producer and the director's thinking,

1:40:07

we've got to get all this package together. That's

1:40:10

our hour there, that's our hour there. But we haven't stopped to

1:40:12

actually evaluate this

1:40:15

thing we're supposed to be evaluating. And I

1:40:17

have some sympathy with people that make television.

1:40:19

Because actually that bit's just, they don't care

1:40:21

about that. But for me, that's all

1:40:23

that matters. I want to give

1:40:25

an honest opinion of the car. Well, that's

1:40:27

where you shine. And that's why you should

1:40:29

only be doing things on your own. I

1:40:32

think I will after this. Yeah. Fuck

1:40:35

that wellness show too. I

1:40:38

said I have to take a leak. Let's come back. We'll

1:40:40

take a little quick break. Dogs in cars

1:40:42

is a good subject. Yeah. I

1:40:44

love having my dog in the car. My dog loves going in

1:40:46

the car. He knows we're going to go do something fun. The

1:40:49

dog, so is it sensible

1:40:52

to suggest that the dog is the ultimate car

1:40:54

companion? Sure, because they're never upset. Yeah. Yeah.

1:40:58

Hey, we're in the car. It must mean we're going somewhere. I

1:41:00

love, so I've got a GT3 Touring 991. You

1:41:04

bring the dog in that. What kind of dog? He's

1:41:06

an English Bull Terrier. How big is he? Quite

1:41:09

a size. But he's on with the shark face. It just looks like he's going

1:41:11

to kill you. But all he'd do is lick you to death. He's

1:41:14

a gorgeous animal. And from

1:41:16

the very, from as a pup, all dogs have

1:41:18

access to all cars. It's really important for me.

1:41:21

Really? If you have a

1:41:23

car that's a million dollars, the dog's going in there. Really? For

1:41:26

me, it's a sucker. It's closest it

1:41:28

gets to religion for me. I love it.

1:41:31

Because for me, it's a demonstration of who

1:41:33

I am. I want my things I love the most to share

1:41:36

the things I love the most. So the dog goes in it.

1:41:38

And I love patination on cars. So

1:41:40

my cars are known for being not

1:41:42

that clean, let's say. They're just

1:41:44

living them. And you know the handle on a

1:41:46

GT3 under the bucket seat, that lovely handle that

1:41:48

he moves and falls backwards. On

1:41:50

mine, they're all chewed, where he chewed them as a puppy.

1:41:52

And I leave them like that. So when

1:41:54

people get in, they go, fuck, what was that? And I

1:41:57

go, I'll talk to you about that. The

1:42:00

only time I've come to grief is

1:42:02

that I now I'm very

1:42:04

suspicious of switch gear that's laid on

1:42:06

the horizontal because I was

1:42:08

on a slip road in an M3

1:42:10

of mine last year. No,

1:42:13

sorry. No, it'd be the GT3. And

1:42:15

I came off a slip road and I accelerated. It

1:42:18

was wet. And I thought I'd lean on the systems,

1:42:20

you know, when you just get that, you lean on the

1:42:22

traction or the ABS and

1:42:24

the cast went fully sideways on

1:42:27

a slip road in the middle of the

1:42:29

day and it looked outrageous. I mean, that's what I'm

1:42:31

quite good at. So I went, well, there you go.

1:42:34

That sideways wound up again. The dog had

1:42:36

put his paw on the ESP button.

1:42:38

Oh, no. He had turned all the

1:42:41

systems. Oh, no. Without me knowing. Oh,

1:42:43

no. So now I'm aware of that.

1:42:45

He's not allowed to do that. Yeah, they shouldn't be

1:42:47

right there. But I suddenly thought that's there. Oh,

1:42:50

what a cutie. That's in

1:42:52

the back of the M5, the VTN M5. That's Pip Dog. Oh,

1:42:55

that's nice. He's an absolute legend.

1:42:58

I'm not sure what he is. But

1:43:00

he's a great dog companion. No dog sickness.

1:43:03

I just love going crazy with him. As long as

1:43:05

they're accustomed to it, that's the thing. When

1:43:07

I have had dogs in the past that I didn't

1:43:10

take in cars often, they take them in a car,

1:43:12

they're kind of freaking out. Why are we moving? They

1:43:14

start throwing up. But it's awful. I

1:43:16

don't want to see a dog like that. No one's seen animals stressed. Right.

1:43:19

And I have rejected cars because my dogs didn't

1:43:21

like them. I had a thing called a... I

1:43:24

had a thing... I

1:43:26

borrowed one and I bought a Golf R Estate.

1:43:29

I'm not sure you got them over here, but

1:43:31

they did a combi sort of station wagon. You've

1:43:33

got... There's a theme here. I love

1:43:35

station wagons. Why do you like station wagons? I

1:43:38

think long roofs and curtailed arses

1:43:40

look better. Really? Yeah.

1:43:43

The three box thing doesn't do as much for me. I like

1:43:45

long down. I don't know why. Oh, I think they look gross.

1:43:47

Yeah. I love them. I see

1:43:49

them. I'm like, what did you do to that fucking thing? So I bought...

1:43:52

This is the new one. That's actually good looking.

1:43:54

I bought the old one. So you type in

1:43:56

the click in 2015 Golf R Estate there. Yeah,

1:44:00

there's a and I Any

1:44:03

one of those yeah, so I went aboard one of

1:44:05

these well That'll be good and that's

1:44:07

not it's not too showy and it'll do the job

1:44:09

and I at that point I had my old dog

1:44:11

boss of my Marana and And

1:44:14

I put him in the back And

1:44:16

he just got out again. I thought Put

1:44:19

him in the back again. It was quite evident. He

1:44:21

did not like the car. I don't know why I

1:44:24

don't like the car because he didn't like so I

1:44:26

took the car back and the guy who saw it

1:44:28

It said what's problem? I said don't like it and

1:44:30

he went What the dog?

1:44:32

Do you mean I said what the dog doesn't like it? I can't

1:44:34

live with it because the dog lives with me So

1:44:37

it goes Absolutely. Yeah. No that

1:44:39

the dogs have been could it possibly

1:44:41

have been Who

1:44:44

knows dogs Dogs are

1:44:46

as we know the most incredible things.

1:44:48

We don't deserve them They

1:44:51

are wonderful, but they see and they

1:44:53

perceive things differently to us Yeah, he

1:44:55

knew it could be that he didn't

1:44:57

like the cologne that the

1:44:59

German guy that assembled the boot Interior

1:45:02

with you know dogs dogs offer

1:45:04

operating level of perception. We can't

1:45:06

even understand right? So I Yeah,

1:45:09

your fascination with bears, you know could have could a

1:45:12

man Beaten be beaten up

1:45:14

by could a man defeat a bear. I

1:45:16

always love that. It's like well What you're

1:45:18

thinking of I love I often like walking

1:45:20

around trying to think what my dog's seeing

1:45:23

of a situation smelling Oh, they must be

1:45:25

smelling just so many different things I know

1:45:27

they apparently can if you have a hamburger

1:45:29

that has like cheese pickles

1:45:32

onions ketchup They can

1:45:34

smell all the individual

1:45:36

items in the hamburger.

1:45:38

They smell everything. They have like a

1:45:40

reference of Discernability. Yeah,

1:45:42

it's just very different than ours. So

1:45:44

do they have like terminator vision? Is

1:45:46

there red code going across and I

1:45:48

like because I have no language too,

1:45:50

right? So it's all on instincts, which

1:45:53

is fascinating because you know, nobody taught

1:45:55

my dog to pee on things But

1:45:57

he just knows that you step what's

1:45:59

this? just pees on it,

1:46:01

you know? When I like take them on trails and

1:46:04

he finds out where all the other dogs have peed, like, oh, I

1:46:06

got a peed out too. But my, there's

1:46:09

an emotional sensitivity to these animals as well. That thing

1:46:11

there you just seen a picture of. I mean, it's

1:46:13

bread to fight bulls and bears.

1:46:15

That was what it was bread to do. But

1:46:18

if, let's just say at certain

1:46:20

times in the month, if my

1:46:22

girlfriend is feeling down, my

1:46:24

dog will go and cuddle her and sit with her

1:46:26

all night and provide heat to the part of her

1:46:28

body that's in pain. He will

1:46:30

do that consistently every single

1:46:32

time. He knows. He

1:46:35

just knows. He knows she's uncomfortable. Yeah. They're

1:46:37

empaths, especially when they really love

1:46:39

you. There's something about them. Like, my

1:46:42

dog understands language. Like he

1:46:44

doesn't know, just like sit, give me

1:46:47

your paw, lie down, stay. But tone,

1:46:49

I bet you he knows tone. Yeah,

1:46:51

he knows things. Like, we

1:46:53

could be going towards the house. I go, nah, let's

1:46:55

go around the back. And he's like, okay, we're going

1:46:57

around the back. He knows what I'm saying. It's

1:47:01

like real subtle, real simple.

1:47:03

I wonder if we over project on them. Because when

1:47:05

we were discussing earlier about some of the, this

1:47:08

sense of being just so disappointed about our

1:47:11

fellow homo sapiens, I over

1:47:13

project onto my dog. The more

1:47:15

I get disappointed by human beings, the

1:47:17

more I revel in dogs. Well, they're

1:47:19

like human beings though, in that it depends

1:47:22

on the life of the dog. Like,

1:47:24

people get killed by wild dogs. Like

1:47:26

in Georgia, some couple recently was attacked and

1:47:28

somebody was killed by wild dogs. Because

1:47:31

the dogs are fending for themselves. They live horrible

1:47:33

lives. Now, people that live horrible lives are

1:47:35

shit people. Right? They're dangerous

1:47:37

shit people. Whereas a dog like

1:47:39

Marshall that said nothing but love and he's

1:47:41

a golden retriever, he's bred that way, he's

1:47:43

just a genuine joy. Everyone

1:47:46

he meets, like you're my new friend. Everybody

1:47:49

just assumes, you know, but you've met dogs

1:47:51

that like they see people over there.

1:47:53

They're sketchy. They're scared of men. Maybe

1:47:56

they were beaten. They're a reflection of the environment in

1:47:58

which they've been brought up. kill

1:52:00

you. Spiders. You go there and

1:52:02

someone will casually go, yeah mate,

1:52:04

that bite you, you're fucked. You're

1:52:06

like, what do you mean? It's just a spider. No

1:52:09

mate, Jesus. It's

1:52:11

not like a big furry thing. In

1:52:13

South America it's big and furry.

1:52:16

Its whole presentation is, I'll

1:52:18

kill you. These ones are not

1:52:20

quite like that. So I do have this

1:52:22

fascination with this stuff. And again, that's

1:52:24

why YouTube's great. Because as

1:52:27

a kid growing up, if you wanted to find out

1:52:29

about this stuff, you couldn't really. You had to go

1:52:31

get a book or, there was no VHS. You had

1:52:33

to blockbuster. You couldn't buy a documentary

1:52:35

of grizzly bears, could you? Right. You couldn't

1:52:38

get it. Right. Now it's all over there.

1:52:40

But even a documentary's not going to do

1:52:42

it. You have to experience them. You

1:52:45

have to actually be around one and see it.

1:52:47

So you have been up close with these things?

1:52:49

I've only seen one grizzly bear in the wild

1:52:51

and it wasn't big. It was about six feet.

1:52:53

But it looked at me so much different than

1:52:55

any other animal that I've ever seen. It looks

1:52:57

right through you. Like, am I going to eat

1:52:59

you? Yeah. So you were a food source. Yeah.

1:53:01

Are you a food source? Am I going to

1:53:03

eat you? What are you? One

1:53:05

of the best things I've done with

1:53:08

Top Gear was with Matt LeBlanc,

1:53:12

who as you can tell,

1:53:14

I'm very fond of. He's

1:53:16

great fun. But he had

1:53:18

this idea around Bigfoot. So

1:53:21

he's a believer in his own way.

1:53:23

He's not a believer, but he presents a really

1:53:25

strong argument. I like people that, as you can

1:53:27

tell, I'll shoot that argument full of holes, but

1:53:29

I liked, I liked to apply tests to things.

1:53:32

He's not a believer, but he likes to apply

1:53:34

tests. He said, stand in

1:53:36

the Washington state forest and tell

1:53:38

me that we know everything is in there. And

1:53:40

I, if you come from a little island off Europe,

1:53:43

the size of your forests are awe inspiring.

1:53:45

Yeah. And the idea there's so much stuff

1:53:47

that we might not know about does

1:53:50

interest me. They're probably at one point

1:53:52

time was something. Yeah. That's what it

1:53:54

really is. And there's an actual animal

1:53:56

called Gigantopithecus that existed alongside human

1:53:59

beings. that was an eight

1:54:01

to 10 foot tall bipedal ape that lived

1:54:03

in Asia and could have come across the

1:54:05

Bering Land Bridge. Yeah, well there you go.

1:54:07

It is possible. It is possible. And there's

1:54:09

also Native Americans have some

1:54:12

enormous number of names for these

1:54:15

creatures, different tribes, so

1:54:17

they don't have fake animals. They don't have

1:54:19

a bunch of dragons and stuff that doesn't

1:54:21

exist. Yeah, it's not a mythical creature. Right.

1:54:23

So I don't wanna pitch Matt into something,

1:54:25

you know, he's not some crazy believer. And

1:54:27

actually the premise of the whole film was

1:54:29

fun. It was, he was there going, I

1:54:32

think there's something here, let's go and have a look for it. And

1:54:35

I was just acutely aware as we

1:54:37

were in, we shot it in Northern California,

1:54:39

so in North San Francisco, the

1:54:42

forest at night is

1:54:44

a sketchy place. You know,

1:54:46

it really reminds you of just how

1:54:49

insignificant we are and how vulnerable we

1:54:51

are without our man-made objects

1:54:53

to defend ourselves. Sure. And

1:54:55

I, in the context of that, a

1:54:57

bear for me was terrifying actually. I just thought

1:54:59

they were creatures I'd seen on nature programs. The

1:55:01

idea that there was something out there that

1:55:04

viewed me as food, that if you

1:55:06

live in England, we don't have that. We

1:55:08

simply don't, we don't have mountain lions. I'm

1:55:11

not gonna eat by a badger. I think the largest

1:55:13

carnivore in the UK is probably a fox or a badger. We

1:55:15

don't have these things that you have. Right. And

1:55:18

difficult for you to understand. There's nothing that

1:55:20

viewed me as a food source. California killed

1:55:22

all the bears, all the grizzlies. They used

1:55:24

to have, well the California state flag is

1:55:27

a grizzly bear. Yeah. And

1:55:29

their bears were similar, I believe, in

1:55:31

size to coastal brown bears. The

1:55:34

grizzlies, the brown bears that used to

1:55:36

live there. And there's a place in

1:55:38

California called Leveque. There's

1:55:41

a town called Leveque that was named after,

1:55:43

I believe his name was Stephen Leveque. He

1:55:45

was the last man to get killed by

1:55:47

a brown bear in California before they eradicated

1:55:49

them. So this is in the 1800s, I

1:55:51

guess? So they just

1:55:53

started killing them all. They just killed them, fuck these

1:55:55

things. They're killing everybody. Yeah. Let's

1:55:57

just kill them. You can sort of see why. Oh yeah. bear

1:56:00

is even more madness again isn't it? Oh yeah. Have

1:56:02

you ever seen that BBC show where they put the

1:56:05

guy in the glass cube? Oh my god. I

1:56:08

mean what was going on there? That

1:56:11

is so terrifying. The thing is just smelling

1:56:14

meat inside that cube and trying to get

1:56:16

through it to get to him. It's

1:56:18

biting it and you see it's massive jaws

1:56:20

and they don't eat anything but

1:56:23

meat. Yeah. So they're the most

1:56:25

dangerous of all polar bears and

1:56:27

ironically they're the ones that we

1:56:29

make seem to be the cutest.

1:56:31

This. Fuck that thing. How do you

1:56:33

know that's going to work by the way? I know. Did you

1:56:36

try that out on a bear? It looks like a shit X-wing

1:56:38

fighter doesn't it from the inside. And this bear just gets

1:56:40

to it and is like oh there's meat in there. How

1:56:42

do I get to that meat? I

1:56:44

just. And we make those things out

1:56:46

to be our friends. You know

1:56:49

that's the you know what would you

1:56:51

do for a Klondike bar. You know

1:56:53

they sell Coca Cola. They sell Klondike

1:56:56

bars and this bear is just

1:56:58

a fucking super predator. Baloo.

1:57:02

Baloo was a bear. What's

1:57:04

Baloo? Baloo. Jungle Book. Oh

1:57:07

yeah. It's amazing isn't it

1:57:09

that we anthropomorphize bears. Yeah. More

1:57:12

than just about any other creature.

1:57:14

Yogi. Paddington bear. Sure. Yeah. Yeah

1:57:16

yeah. Friendly cuddly. I think because

1:57:19

they do look quite appealing. And

1:57:21

they are dog like. Aren't they? They're

1:57:23

slightly dog like. Snout. Sure. Shape of head.

1:57:26

Well we put hats on them and shit.

1:57:28

Only you can throw in forest fires. And

1:57:32

they want to eat you. Yeah they want to eat you.

1:57:34

They want to eat anything that's slow. I mean that's what

1:57:37

they're there for. They're nature's cleanup crew. Friend of mine walked

1:57:39

to the North Pole for some reason. I don't know why.

1:57:41

And he was and he

1:57:44

had a lot of training before and this

1:57:46

is a long time ago. But the polar

1:57:48

bear training was but he talked about

1:57:50

was quite difficult

1:57:52

to absorb really effectively. It was that

1:57:55

there was no there was no gun that you could carry on

1:57:57

an expedition like that if you're just on your own or with

1:57:59

three other people. with sleds. There's nothing you

1:58:01

can carry that you could immediately produce

1:58:03

that would stop a polar bear, an

1:58:05

adult polar bear. So the best thing

1:58:07

they had was a short shotgun that

1:58:10

had a solid bolt, just a solid bolt in it.

1:58:12

And if you could get that one thing off, you

1:58:14

could stop it. But there's no gauge of shotgun that

1:58:16

was going to stop one of these things. It was

1:58:18

coming at you. So they carried

1:58:20

this thing. They carried this thing that had

1:58:23

a solid bolt in it. That's all he had. I don't

1:58:25

know much about guns, but that's what they said they were

1:58:27

given. There's

1:58:29

some pistols that you can effectively

1:58:31

unload into a bear and stop them. A 50

1:58:33

cal would stop it, would it? Yeah, well, sure.

1:58:35

A 50 cal, I don't know, they have a

1:58:38

50 cal pistol, but they have 40, you know,

1:58:40

40 magnums, 44. That would stop

1:58:42

a bear. You have to shoot it multiple

1:58:44

times. Yeah,

1:58:46

not one. And you know, and like,

1:58:48

if you have a 38 or

1:58:51

a nine millimeter, good luck. Good

1:58:54

luck. Is that just a bounce right off its

1:58:56

head? Their heads are so thick. You

1:58:59

could literally shoot it in the forehead and it probably

1:59:01

bounce off its forehead. I mean,

1:59:04

they bite each other. You've seen them go to

1:59:06

war with each other when they bite each other.

1:59:09

Oh, God. They have insane amounts of power and

1:59:11

bite force. And they're just clamping down on each

1:59:13

other's face and they'll do it for half an

1:59:15

hour, walk away like it was nothing. Okay, that

1:59:18

versus a big gorilla. That's a

1:59:20

good question. We've had that question

1:59:22

many times. What is it? I think

1:59:24

the gorilla is at a severe disadvantage

1:59:26

because it doesn't really kill anything. Yeah.

1:59:28

So the gorilla just gnashes its teeth

1:59:30

at other gorillas and makes lickies a

1:59:32

badass and they have incredible power, but

1:59:34

they don't even eat meat. Whereas

1:59:36

the bear, all it does is run

1:59:38

around killing things. It's all

1:59:41

it does, kills things and eats dead things. And

1:59:43

that's what it wants to do. I

1:59:46

got my money on the bear. I love it.

1:59:48

I love it. What I know about is cars and

1:59:50

I'm here asking questions about bears, but well,

1:59:52

they're fascinating. It's a fascinating part of

1:59:55

our world and anthropomorphizing is a really

1:59:57

fascinating aspect of it. And I think...

2:00:00

I think in America it happened with Teddy Roosevelt,

2:00:02

with the teddy bear. I think

2:00:04

that's the beginning of the end. And then Disney movies

2:00:06

were a huge problem. Disney movies are a huge problem,

2:00:08

because all the bears are your friend. They all talk

2:00:10

to everybody and say, why would

2:00:12

you kill the bear? Like that is a

2:00:15

giant forest dog. That's an evil animal that

2:00:17

it doesn't give a fuck about. You or

2:00:19

your kids, it'll pull you out of your

2:00:21

tent, it'll eat you, 100%. And

2:00:25

they're wonderful and they're beautiful, and we should definitely

2:00:27

keep a healthy population of them. I'm not saying

2:00:29

we should eradicate them, but know

2:00:31

what they are and don't be influenced

2:00:34

by these goddamn cartoons, cartoons and movies,

2:00:36

which have fucked people's heads up. Yeah,

2:00:40

as a parent you realize it as well, particularly

2:00:44

in the UK we don't have

2:00:46

dangerous species of animals like that, but we

2:00:48

do through anthropomorphizing them

2:00:50

in films and cartoons. We

2:00:54

make things cute that might not be cute. Sure.

2:00:57

We have a real urban fox population in the UK. They

2:01:02

actually started in my hometown of Bristol. The

2:01:05

fox is a clever creature and it worked out that it was

2:01:07

much easier to come into town and raid bins than it was

2:01:09

to stay out there trying to find rabbits in

2:01:11

the countryside. And these nighttime

2:01:14

foxes, they were very clever.

2:01:16

No one really knew where they were there.

2:01:18

The BBC made a fantastic documentary, I think

2:01:20

again, Attenborough in the early 80s about urban

2:01:22

foxes. And they've spread throughout the UK.

2:01:25

And the fox is this, in

2:01:27

most cartoons, it's a lovely cuddly thing with a

2:01:29

bushy tail, it's a beautiful color. But

2:01:33

they're predators, they're a

2:01:35

real problem for farmers and

2:01:38

they eat a lot of poultry. I'm not even going into

2:01:40

fox hunting, that's not my world. But

2:01:44

there's been a few stories recently of foxes

2:01:46

going into people's houses and attacking babies and

2:01:50

stuff like that. And then you

2:01:52

see on Instagram people feeding the foxes in their back gardens

2:01:54

and you think, that's not a

2:01:56

domesticated animal. Yeah, you can't do that. You can't, you

2:01:58

know, you gotta make a... You've got to

2:02:00

decide one or the other. Also,

2:02:03

if you feed them, then they become accustomed

2:02:05

to getting food from that particular area. And

2:02:07

then you kind of fuck them up, because

2:02:09

then they lose their ability to hunt. If

2:02:11

you do it too often, if you provide

2:02:13

them with food every day, you're going to

2:02:15

fuck them up. I've just

2:02:17

had my holiday down in Newquay on the north coast of

2:02:19

Cornwall, which is just one of the most beautiful places

2:02:21

on the planet. And when you buy fish

2:02:23

and chips from the fish and

2:02:26

chips outlets, they all have a seagull

2:02:28

warning now on the shop front. Saying,

2:02:30

when you buy your fish and chips,

2:02:32

protect it. Because all the seagulls just

2:02:34

dive bomb people. Wow. So it's like

2:02:36

that scene in that Jurassic Park film,

2:02:38

where the pterodactyls are coming down. You

2:02:41

ever seen a seagull eat a rat? Yeah,

2:02:43

hole. Hole? Just throw it down.

2:02:47

They'll do it to pigeons. They'll do it to

2:02:49

everything they can catch. There's a wonderful Instagram clip.

2:02:52

I've been missing too much my life search history here. I think it's

2:02:54

a cormorant just being given like

2:02:57

a black oily thing, just being given

2:02:59

fish. And it eats like five.

2:03:02

Yeah, I've seen that. You think that the volume

2:03:04

of fish you've eaten there is greater than the

2:03:06

mass of your body. There's no way that I

2:03:08

didn't think you could eat that. No, there's so

2:03:11

many videos of different birds throwing

2:03:13

down a whole largemouth bass. And it's

2:03:15

like, how is it even getting in

2:03:17

your mouth? They have these

2:03:19

skinny little necks and they swell up. And

2:03:22

they have the fins popping out of the

2:03:25

tails popping out of their mouth. Yeah,

2:03:27

they're pretty extraordinary creatures. And they're essentially

2:03:29

dinosaurs. And actually, to come back to

2:03:31

the content discussion, YouTube,

2:03:34

whatever it is, I do love

2:03:36

the fact it's all out there. I love the fact

2:03:38

it's being recorded. I

2:03:40

had never seen this stuff. I've got a particular phobia.

2:03:42

And it is a phobia. I hate crabs. And

2:03:45

I'm not talking about the STD style.

2:03:47

I'm talking about crustacea. Why?

2:03:52

I think they're horrid to look at. I

2:03:55

think I won't eat them. I'll eat all other seafood. Really?

2:03:57

I'll eat all other seafood, but I won't eat a crab.

2:03:59

You'll eat lobster? They

2:10:00

eat red crabs, I guess. Oh, they eat

2:10:02

other crab. Well, we mostly eat other animals,

2:10:04

and we're animals. Dear me,

2:10:06

well, I've shared too much there. So that's

2:10:08

my ultimate fear. Crabs. I can remember

2:10:11

several times we'd be asked on Top Gear when we

2:10:13

were going away, you know, are you okay with everything?

2:10:15

And I'd be thinking, I'll do

2:10:17

anything. I'll eat my own feces. But if there's

2:10:20

crabs there, I've got problems. And

2:10:22

only once did we go somewhere where there was, we had

2:10:24

to go there, and we were just in Cuba filming

2:10:27

the opening for this film. And

2:10:29

we were in Bay of Pigs. So

2:10:32

we were actually there. We were right there

2:10:34

with a Maserati and an old Camaro filming

2:10:36

this intro to a film. Totally random. What

2:10:39

is it like being in Cuba? I'll

2:10:42

give you that in a minute. Okay. And

2:10:45

I don't know, well, you know, I was so

2:10:48

punch-drunk with just travel and filming that I'm working

2:10:50

so hard. You'd almost just

2:10:52

wake up and go, it's another mad place. I was

2:10:54

in Kazakhstan today. Right. I was like, okay,

2:10:56

I will get on with it. And looking back, I was in Kazakhstan for

2:10:59

10 days with Matt LeBlanc from Friends.

2:11:01

That's a mad thing to do. That's

2:11:03

pretty mad. But at the time it

2:11:05

was just like work. Anyhow, it's a Bay of Pigs. And I looked

2:11:07

at my phone, I thought, this is the Bay

2:11:09

of Pigs. Fucking hell. This

2:11:12

is where it all

2:11:14

went a bit wrong for America. This is historically quite a

2:11:16

significant place. It's gonna have been a real problem. Yeah. Anyhow,

2:11:20

and I'm looking around, and there's lots going on, and I

2:11:22

look left. I'm filming the opening piece to

2:11:24

camera, which was typically bad for me. But

2:11:26

the reason why it was really bad, was I looked left,

2:11:28

there was a crab down there shuffling

2:11:30

around, and I'm like, I need that. Gone.

2:11:33

But I can't admit to people that that big

2:11:35

is worrying me. That is really worrying me. I'm

2:11:38

thinking, that's gonna crawl up my leg. Something

2:11:41

totally irrational. I think we

2:11:43

all have a creature maybe, a bogeyman, or a

2:11:45

bogeywoman, whatever it is, that

2:11:47

maybe we fear. Do you have one

2:11:49

on all of that? No, but I

2:11:51

think where that comes from, I have

2:11:53

a feeling it's genetic memory. I think

2:11:56

that's where aphydia-phobia comes from, arachnophobia, fear

2:11:58

of snakes and spiders. I think, because

2:12:00

some people, We've experienced that on Fear

2:12:02

Factor as well. Some people have a

2:12:04

real, it seems like a genetic, irrational

2:12:06

fear of certain things. And

2:12:09

I really feel like that is some

2:12:11

memory from either an ancestor

2:12:13

getting bit or seeing someone

2:12:15

get bit and die. I

2:12:18

think there's something to that. There's

2:12:20

a reason why it exists in some people

2:12:22

and not in others. Because it can't be

2:12:24

completely irrational, can it? Right.

2:12:27

I think it's completely a genetic memory.

2:12:30

That's my number one guess. Cuba was

2:12:32

fascinating because, I suppose as an American

2:12:34

citizen, you can't go there, can you?

2:12:37

Can you go there now? I think you used to be

2:12:39

able to go there. I think during the Obama administration, they made it so

2:12:41

you can go there. It's an amazing

2:12:43

place because it's one of the few... Which

2:12:48

is kind of crazy your government can tell you you can't

2:12:50

go somewhere like far. Yes, and some of it's so close

2:12:52

to you as well. Exactly. You can

2:12:54

go there on a rowboat. I would say it's

2:12:56

a museum is what it is. It's a fully

2:12:58

functioning museum. For automobiles? For

2:13:02

life in many ways. It's not

2:13:04

something that's been allowed to develop the

2:13:06

way that a country should have developed over the last 40, 50 years. So

2:13:10

you have a society

2:13:12

that has limited technology and

2:13:15

has evolved the way that it does. And

2:13:18

then you see how resourceful human beings can be.

2:13:20

With reference to the automobile, yes, it's fascinating because

2:13:23

there's really... It's a

2:13:25

strange mashup of weird

2:13:28

Soviet intervention and Americana

2:13:30

from the 50s and... Well, up to

2:13:32

50s. So they've kept these

2:13:34

American cars going that should have died. They've

2:13:38

also got a whole load of Soviet

2:13:40

era larders that came in when the

2:13:43

Russians wanted to help them out. And also

2:13:45

that's where their power stations come from. Their

2:13:47

power station, they have a coal fired power station on

2:13:49

the north side of the island that

2:13:51

when it's operating has a plume of smoke

2:13:54

that goes as far as the eye can

2:13:56

see. I mean, it's an amazing thing. I

2:13:59

couldn't believe it. sort of slightly hidden from

2:14:01

all the tourists. It's,

2:14:04

yes, it's a country

2:14:06

that hasn't been allowed to develop at the same speed as

2:14:09

the rest of the world. And it's, what,

2:14:11

100 miles from the coast of the US

2:14:14

or something? I mean, I think it's 90.

2:14:16

Is it? It's amazing. It's well

2:14:18

worth visiting if you can go just to see

2:14:20

it. Just shows you what

2:14:22

happens when human beings act absurdly. Did

2:14:25

you feel safe over there? Totally. Yeah.

2:14:28

Totally safe. I had, I had, I,

2:14:31

I, in many ways, I loved it. In

2:14:33

many ways, I wouldn't want to go again. It's one

2:14:35

of those curious places where I thought, I've

2:14:37

seen the right side of it. If I scratch

2:14:39

too deeply, am I going to see something I

2:14:41

don't want to see? Right. Maybe that was it.

2:14:43

Well, you certainly will. I mean, there's a reason

2:14:45

why people are escaping there. Yeah, of course. You

2:14:47

know, they're trapped. Yeah. They're trapped in a communist

2:14:49

dictatorship. Yeah. It's not good.

2:14:51

Yeah. But as a tourist, you obviously

2:14:53

presented something completely contorted, aren't you? That's

2:14:56

what happens. And then when you're making

2:14:58

a TV show. It's also a communist

2:15:00

dictatorship that's in a very unusual predicament

2:15:02

because they're not allowed to trade, right?

2:15:05

So China's a communist

2:15:07

dictatorship, but we buy everything

2:15:09

from China. They're arguably worse

2:15:11

than Cuba, but we're not

2:15:13

allowed to trade with Cuba because some shit that happened

2:15:15

in the 60s. But Cuba can sell stuff to other

2:15:17

countries other than America. Right. So, you know,

2:15:19

we're full of their cigars and their rum and- But not

2:15:21

America. It used to, I think you can get them now

2:15:23

in limited quantities, but it used to be, if you got

2:15:25

a hold of Cuban cigars, I

2:15:28

would get them. I'm gonna tell you a thing I did that

2:15:30

was illegal. I used to get them from England. And

2:15:33

I used to get Cuban cigars. I had a friend who

2:15:35

lived in England and he would send me Cuban

2:15:37

cigars and then later he would send me the

2:15:39

labels. So he

2:15:41

would send me the cigars with no

2:15:43

labels, like in a Ziploc bag, send

2:15:45

me a few cigars, and then he

2:15:47

would send me the labels in an

2:15:50

envelope a couple days later. The

2:15:52

pollution in Havana was the worst I've ever

2:15:54

experienced of a city. I think

2:15:56

when the wind changed that, that power station

2:15:58

just blew straight over. Well, there's

2:16:01

a place, was it in Indiana? Where

2:16:04

there's three coal-fired power plants? And if

2:16:06

you go outside, you can run your

2:16:08

finger over someone's windshield and you have

2:16:10

black coal dust on your finger. And

2:16:12

all these people in that area have

2:16:14

all sorts of weird fucking diseases because

2:16:16

they're just breathing in particulates every day.

2:16:19

We went to, one of

2:16:21

the best things I did with Top Gear, again, a

2:16:24

repeat phrase, maybe I need to reconsider my negativity,

2:16:27

was the Kazakhstan thing with Matt. So

2:16:29

we went there and Rory was there as well and we ended

2:16:32

up at Baikonur, which is the Cosmodrome where

2:16:35

the Russian space program

2:16:37

is based. And

2:16:40

it's an incredible area. I mean, it's just mind-bendingly

2:16:43

brilliant. The vastness of

2:16:45

that part of the world, the Soviet Union, we

2:16:47

think that the United States America is big, the

2:16:50

Soviet Union was on a scale that

2:16:52

you cannot comprehend. Kazakhstan was

2:16:54

just a small bolt-on to Russia, but

2:16:57

in itself has, I think,

2:16:59

the fourth longest border of any country

2:17:01

with Russia. It's enormous. And

2:17:03

this area called Baikonur, the

2:17:06

way that the Russians worked, was

2:17:08

once they'd used the launch site, they'd just go somewhere else.

2:17:10

Because it was so big, they'd just abandon that one, move

2:17:12

on to another one. It's a bit like rabbit warrens, you

2:17:14

know, just move on. And they plotted all of

2:17:16

it in a map. Anyhow, we went

2:17:18

there and we watched, well, when

2:17:20

we got close, you were aware of the amount of heavy industry.

2:17:22

It was just the place was, the first place I've been to

2:17:25

where I thought, I'm not sure I should be breathing this. It

2:17:27

just felt like you were breathing

2:17:30

in stuff that was hurting you. I've been

2:17:32

to, you know, Indian cities where there's heavy

2:17:34

pollution, but that's just sort of diesel and

2:17:36

petrol fumes. There was something else

2:17:38

there, you know, you're like going, what

2:17:40

is that? But

2:17:43

they, it culminated with us watching a Soy's

2:17:45

rocket take off. And

2:17:47

they let us get much closer to film it

2:17:49

than you would normally be allowed to be.

2:17:52

And I've never watched a rocket take off

2:17:54

before. I haven't been to Cape Canaveral or

2:17:56

anywhere in the US. It

2:17:58

was one of the most awe inspiring things. I've ever seen. Sounds

2:18:00

like such a cliche. But watching a

2:18:02

vehicle that has enough power to leave our

2:18:05

atmosphere is something

2:18:07

I'd advise anyone to do if they have the

2:18:09

chance. There's a

2:18:13

sort of ripping sound in the air that people will have

2:18:15

seen it will understand. It does feel

2:18:17

like just the power of

2:18:19

this thing is shredding the atmosphere around you.

2:18:21

And it hits you in the solar plexus.

2:18:23

You have no control over this sort of

2:18:25

rattling in your wrist. I think we were

2:18:28

less than a kilometre away from where it went off. It

2:18:31

was absolutely sensational to witness.

2:18:34

Just power. Raw

2:18:37

power. And the idea that

2:18:39

Mr Musk has got something that's more powerful than

2:18:41

Saturn 5 about to take

2:18:43

off. That fascinates me.

2:18:45

All of that sort of thing. We

2:18:47

talk about power in engines. Your act has got

2:18:49

a bit of grunt. But these things they

2:18:52

just rattle you. But the

2:18:54

smell afterwards is interesting. It's

2:18:57

got to be horrible. Every time they

2:18:59

launch, how many cars does

2:19:01

that account for? You think

2:19:03

about the amount of pollution that's put out, the

2:19:05

amount of carbon that's put out by the burning

2:19:07

rockets. I can't

2:19:10

even begin to quantify it. And also what

2:19:12

are they burning as well? What's in

2:19:15

there? Talking about ropey

2:19:18

fuels. I was talking to

2:19:20

some guys that used to race

2:19:22

sports cars and Formula One back in the 80s

2:19:24

when they were using some very funky fuels. Because

2:19:28

there was lots of technology left over in

2:19:30

the Second World War that the Germans had

2:19:32

for jet engines that they had pioneered that

2:19:35

had weird lubricants in them that allowed

2:19:37

them to run at very high temperatures

2:19:39

or have properties that normal fuel didn't

2:19:41

have. And they would use it for

2:19:44

qualifying, particularly in Formula One. And

2:19:46

the drivers after one lap were gone, they

2:19:48

were just spent. There was also great stories about

2:19:51

the fact that they sometimes have a sort of

2:19:53

area outside the Formula One garage. It wasn't

2:19:55

as a developed sport then, but they still

2:19:57

had sponsors and guests. And

2:20:00

one particular team had all

2:20:02

the trees they put outside just died in

2:20:04

an afternoon. Because this

2:20:06

fuel was so obnoxious. And actually a guy

2:20:08

called Andy Wallace, who's a fantastic racing

2:20:11

driver, who's now the chief test driver

2:20:13

for Bugatti, tells some amazing stories about

2:20:15

literally being hauled out of Group C

2:20:17

race cars after qualifying because the fuel

2:20:19

was just impossible, just poisoning

2:20:22

them. But it gave them

2:20:24

an extra 100 horsepower for that lap. Well, how

2:20:26

about leaded gasoline? Leaded gasoline has

2:20:28

been studies that show that in the

2:20:30

places with higher amounts of leaded gasoline,

2:20:33

you can see the lower IQ in

2:20:35

the kids. And they

2:20:37

think that it has dropped people's IQ

2:20:39

by a measurable amount. People

2:20:41

that grew up around leaded gasoline, which

2:20:44

is me, during that time,

2:20:46

we are dumber because

2:20:48

of leaded gasoline. The

2:20:51

pipes in our homes 150 years ago

2:20:53

were made of lead. Lead

2:20:56

pipes. Well, my friend Shane

2:20:58

Gillis is in a hilarious bit

2:21:00

about George Washington. And George Washington

2:21:02

had lead dentures. So

2:21:04

he had this lead thing where these fake

2:21:06

teeth were pricked. So he had like lead

2:21:08

in his mouth. So

2:21:10

he's getting lead poisoning all day long.

2:21:13

I have somewhere in my house, something

2:21:16

I bought from the internet, which is boots

2:21:18

chemists. So our chemists, your CVS,

2:21:21

we have boots, which is our standard chemist.

2:21:24

It's a logo of healthcare

2:21:27

of stuff that's good for you. Boots

2:21:29

used to sell cigarettes for

2:21:31

coughs. I've

2:21:35

got some, I've got a tin somewhere. It's brilliant. So

2:21:38

it shows you how you should smoke them to get

2:21:40

rid of your cough. Oh, boy. So

2:21:42

I think... That wasn't that long ago. No,

2:21:44

that's probably after the Second

2:21:47

World War. No, before the Second World War. Crazy.

2:21:50

I would have thought so. Of

2:21:52

course they did. But then someone... I just

2:21:55

Googled something like it to see if I'd find the dad and it...

2:22:00

says that menthol cigarettes are flavored which to

2:22:02

help with cough. Oh come

2:22:04

on. What? It says the menthol

2:22:06

can decrease the cough reflex. Which can

2:22:09

help with cough. Heard of that. By

2:22:11

reducing airway pain and irritation menthol can

2:22:13

reduce the pain and irritation caused by

2:22:15

cigarettes. Decreasing the cough

2:22:17

reflex menthol triggers cold sensitive nerves

2:22:19

in the skin which can decrease

2:22:21

the cold the cough reflex. Soothing

2:22:24

a dry throat menthol can soothe the

2:22:26

dry throat feeling. That's funny

2:22:28

that AI is willing to say something that's

2:22:30

very un-PC. You think the AI fucked up

2:22:33

here? Yeah. Well it's probably true. It's terrible

2:22:35

for you. Yes, however smoking can make you

2:22:37

cough more. Interesting. Yeah.

2:22:41

Can't you say menthol without it being in the format

2:22:43

of a cigarette? I'm sure.

2:22:45

Yeah, it's a cough drop. Yeah.

2:22:48

But what we've learned about

2:22:50

metallurgy is fascinating

2:22:52

and it does it does mean that that's why

2:22:54

we have to apply

2:22:56

that to what we currently witness

2:23:00

in the motorcar and the auto oil industry. There

2:23:02

is there's technology out there that will change something

2:23:04

at some point. We just don't know what it

2:23:06

is yet. It's gonna happen because

2:23:08

we're having to relearn so much of what we

2:23:11

thought was fact in other areas of our lives.

2:23:13

Mm-hmm. And I think maybe that's what I get

2:23:15

frustrated by is that you can't wait for that

2:23:17

unprecedented change to come necessarily.

2:23:19

But you have to assume at some point someone's

2:23:22

gonna make a battery that runs on wasp piss

2:23:24

or like in water or something aren't they? It's

2:23:26

gonna happen. Scientists are clever. They

2:23:28

have big foreheads for a reason. At the moment

2:23:30

the argument is whether there's not enough cobalt or

2:23:33

maybe any of the lithium from... it's a

2:23:35

slightly speechless argument because I think it won't

2:23:37

always be like that. Someone will invent something

2:23:39

that means that we won't need the cobalt

2:23:41

and the lithium. Well some guy invented a

2:23:43

water-powered car a long time ago and he

2:23:46

was murdered. Do you know

2:23:48

that story? It's one of the great conspiracy theories

2:23:50

that he yelled he met with

2:23:52

some people you know that wanted to talk to

2:23:54

him about this design and then he yelled they

2:23:57

poisoned me and he ran outside and died. on

2:26:00

water narrated by science fiction writer Arthur C.

2:26:02

Clark, aired on BBC, focused

2:26:04

on his water fuel cell invention. It's

2:26:06

a fuel cell, okay. Who

2:26:09

is ignored, called a fraud, and died without

2:26:12

his hometown even remembering him with

2:26:14

so much as a plaque. But

2:26:19

I have to believe that

2:26:22

a piece of technology will emerge in

2:26:25

the next 50 years that

2:26:27

will make us all wonder why we all got

2:26:30

so freaked out. Yeah, right,

2:26:32

especially over exhaust, right? It says

2:26:34

the basis for Meyer's research, electrolysis,

2:26:37

is taught in middle school science labs,

2:26:39

electricity flows through water, cracking the molecules

2:26:41

and filling test tubes with oxygen and

2:26:43

hydrogen bubbles. A match is

2:26:45

lighted, the volatile gases explode, and

2:26:48

prove that water is separated into

2:26:50

its components. Meyer said his invention

2:26:52

did so by using much less

2:26:54

electricity than physicists say is possible,

2:26:57

video show his contraption, turning water

2:27:00

into a frothy mix within seconds,

2:27:02

takes so much energy to separate

2:27:04

H2 from the O, said Ohio

2:27:06

State University professor emeritus Neville Rie,

2:27:10

a physicist for more than 41 years, that energy

2:27:12

is pretty much not changed with time, it's a

2:27:14

fixed amount and nothing changes that. Meyer's

2:27:16

work defies the laws of conservation

2:27:19

of energy, which states that

2:27:21

energy cannot be created or destroyed. Basically,

2:27:23

it says you cannot get something for

2:27:26

nothing. He may have had a

2:27:28

nice way to store hydrogen and use it to

2:27:30

make a very effective motor, but

2:27:32

there is no way to do something

2:27:34

fancy and separate hydrogen with less energy.

2:27:37

Hmm. So

2:27:40

who knows? But when

2:27:42

he said the Lord sent me, okay, now it

2:27:44

gets odd. His first

2:27:46

few words were the Lord sent me here to

2:27:48

this home, I'd like to

2:27:50

use your home as an experiment. Okay,

2:27:53

hold on. Meyer's creativity seemed to peak

2:27:55

when he met Charles and Valerie Hughes,

2:27:57

truck drivers who lived in the

2:27:59

Jackson. test

2:32:00

rig, it has lower emissions than it should

2:32:02

do. This had been going on for a

2:32:04

long time but the scale of it was

2:32:08

I suppose an industrial subterfuge that

2:32:11

I didn't think was, I didn't

2:32:13

think it could happen. Especially with a

2:32:15

large corporation like Volkswagen. I know that

2:32:17

did shake me because I always,

2:32:20

I'm a flag bearer for my industry, I'm proud

2:32:22

to be part of the wider car industry and

2:32:25

I didn't think that could happen and

2:32:28

it wasn't just a bit of naughtiness,

2:32:30

it was lies. And

2:32:33

how many people knew about it?

2:32:38

One has to assume quite a few. Yeah

2:32:40

you'd assume. But I think I think I

2:32:42

think they would have, there was a moral

2:32:44

complication to it because they

2:32:46

were still making very clever really

2:32:49

quite clean vehicles. They

2:32:51

weren't trying to cover up

2:32:55

something absolutely hideous. They

2:32:58

were in the margins but

2:33:00

it was still wrong, it was morally completely

2:33:02

wrong. And once they'd got

2:33:05

away with it they were stuck with

2:33:07

it, they couldn't suddenly sort of backtrack

2:33:09

on it. And I think it shook

2:33:12

my confidence in those

2:33:15

large corporations. I thought they were being more honest

2:33:17

with us and probably made me more

2:33:19

likely to believe conspiracy theories afterwards. I thought well

2:33:21

if they're capable of that, what

2:33:24

else are they doing? Conspiracy theories

2:33:26

are fascinating because some of them are bullshit

2:33:28

and some of them are real and it's

2:33:30

hard to figure out what's what. Yeah. You

2:33:32

know there's some crazy ones like the earth

2:33:34

is flat and then there's some ones like

2:33:36

the CIA might have killed JFK. Yeah. And

2:33:39

you're like whoo, they might have. They

2:33:42

might have. It makes very good listening. I

2:33:44

love listening to talk about it. Oh they're fascinating. But

2:33:46

I suppose I'm, I tend to

2:33:48

sit a bit further back and just I'd like to

2:33:50

hear other people talk about them but when it enters

2:33:53

your world, because when something becomes pertinent to you, you

2:33:56

suddenly go hang on a minute, what else have they

2:33:58

been doing here? And how bad were they?

2:34:00

Was it and how many of

2:34:02

them did they get away with yeah for

2:34:04

everyone that gets cut it's not like they catch

2:34:06

every conspiracy Right, there's

2:34:08

no way no no some of them

2:34:10

sneak through and managed to be effective

2:34:13

do you know the latest one about

2:34:15

this gentleman who was a a billionaire

2:34:18

who had apparently overvalued his

2:34:20

company and Went

2:34:22

to court for it and the

2:34:25

possibility of him Winning

2:34:27

this court battle was something like one half

2:34:30

of 1% This is Mike

2:34:32

Lynch is it yeah the guy who died

2:34:34

on the boat and then right after he

2:34:36

gets out The guy who

2:34:38

he's with the co-defendant gets hit by a

2:34:40

car and then he

2:34:42

gets hit by a freak water spout

2:34:45

And sinks his yacht I Was

2:34:47

discussing this over a few glasses of wine

2:34:50

hits with friends. It's a good it's got

2:34:52

Rogan written all over It's perfect

2:34:54

for you. I'm not gonna

2:34:56

pass any comment I'm gonna be a soft cock again,

2:34:59

but I'm gonna say that I read it and

2:35:01

my eyes Well

2:35:03

my eyebrows razor thought that

2:35:05

seems like a coincidence didn't the lawyer die as

2:35:07

well Who

2:35:10

else died the co-defendant was hit by

2:35:12

a car in Cambridge I think in

2:35:14

it so the one one incident was

2:35:16

a cycling incident in the UK a

2:35:19

few days It hit and run No,

2:35:21

they've got they have the person that hit the

2:35:23

cyclists I think they have got but they were

2:35:25

asking for information around it did

2:35:28

the person that hit the cyclist have

2:35:30

any connection to anybody that I Don't

2:35:33

know was it I don't know I

2:35:35

just read it just thought like you Yeah

2:35:39

billionaire autonomy Co-founder Mike

2:35:41

Lynch and Stephen Chamberlain's careers were

2:35:43

intertwined for years in a fraud

2:35:45

trial then they died on the

2:35:47

same day miles apart Wow,

2:35:52

I Think

2:35:55

I suppose the difficulty

2:35:57

I have with that is that's a

2:35:59

tragedy They fucked

2:36:01

over some billionaires. They fucked

2:36:03

over some very, very powerful. It was

2:36:05

Hewlett-Packard. Yeah. So they sold

2:36:08

autonomy to Hewlett-Packard and there was a big...

2:36:12

He was extradited to the US and

2:36:16

I don't know. It's not my world. I

2:36:18

suppose the conspiracy theory thing is fascinating,

2:36:21

but then when it's in the context of people

2:36:23

losing their lives like that, I'm like, do I

2:36:25

want to comment? Because it's so awful what happened.

2:36:27

It's awful. And also going

2:36:30

down in a boat was right up there for me

2:36:32

of Jesus Christ. Also a

2:36:34

freak water spout. Have you seen the

2:36:36

size of this boat? It's

2:36:38

extraordinary. It's like 300 feet long. Yeah.

2:36:41

How? Yeah. How

2:36:43

did it say? What happened? I

2:36:45

know. You love it, don't you? Love it.

2:36:48

You absolutely love it, don't you? Because I got to think that there's

2:36:50

people in this world that have the ability

2:36:52

to do certain things to certain people that fuck

2:36:54

them over. I think

2:36:56

you're right. That

2:36:59

seems like that would

2:37:01

qualify. We're talking about they got ripped

2:37:03

off by billions of dollars and then

2:37:05

somehow another this guy gets off and

2:37:08

then dies right away. Yeah. And

2:37:11

dies in the weirdest of ways. A freak

2:37:13

water spout. How

2:37:16

many people die every year in freak water spouts on

2:37:18

300 foot yachts? I'm

2:37:22

doing my uncomfortable face. It's

2:37:25

so out there. It's so out there. It

2:37:28

really is. And I'll

2:37:31

bring it back to something more mundane. There

2:37:33

were quite a lot of things that happened in Formula One, a

2:37:36

sport that I followed the most closely probably, in

2:37:39

the 90s and noughties that looking back, you

2:37:42

think there must have been someone had a button

2:37:44

that could make things happen because

2:37:47

it was so beyond the coincidence. And

2:37:50

I never stopped to think of the implications of that

2:37:52

thought. But if someone could do that in a sport,

2:37:54

they could do it in the rest of your

2:37:57

life. They've always rigged sports. I mean, people have

2:37:59

been rigging sports. since the beginning of sports

2:38:01

betting. But the sport that you're involved with,

2:38:03

you can't, can you rig that? Oh yes,

2:38:05

people have rigged it. People have gotten in

2:38:07

trouble for rigging it. Yeah. Yeah. Certain fighters

2:38:10

may have an injury. There's

2:38:12

a controversy about a certain trainer

2:38:15

that was involved in betting and

2:38:17

then an online discord server

2:38:20

and they would talk about bets and he'd make

2:38:22

a lot of bets and he was making more

2:38:24

money betting than other things. And there was a

2:38:27

fighter that he was taken care of and

2:38:29

that fighter apparently had a knee

2:38:31

injury and went into the

2:38:34

fight and then all this money got bet

2:38:36

on this guy losing in the first round.

2:38:39

And so he throws a kick in the first

2:38:41

round, falls down, gets beat up, loses by TKO

2:38:43

in the first round, blows his knee out. His

2:38:45

knee had apparently already been fucked. And

2:38:47

so this guy who is the trainer has now

2:38:50

been, he's being investigated by the

2:38:52

feds. He gets kicked out of

2:38:54

the sport. No one from his gym is allowed

2:38:56

to compete in the UFC anymore. And

2:38:58

he's under investigation. And if it turns

2:39:01

out that they're, what they're saying about

2:39:03

him is true, he's really rightly fucked.

2:39:05

Yeah. I think actually

2:39:07

there's a crossover here between conspiracy

2:39:09

and cheating. Now, I

2:39:12

think the greatest book that's not been written and

2:39:15

never will be written is the greatest cheats in

2:39:17

motorsport. Some of

2:39:19

the stories I've heard over the years are so

2:39:21

good. Just because what they

2:39:23

do is they reveal the

2:39:26

competitive nature of human beings, but also

2:39:28

ingenuity. You

2:39:30

will see people that are most ingenious when

2:39:32

they're cheating, not when they're abiding by the

2:39:35

rules. Right. And Formula One is about the

2:39:37

phrase that the great Mark Donahue, one of your

2:39:39

great drivers, Mark Donahue was a Can-Am driver who

2:39:41

did a bit of Formula One as well. He

2:39:43

coined the phrase, the unfair advantage, which

2:39:46

I phrase I love because it just defines so many

2:39:48

sports. Whether we like it

2:39:50

or not, we're searching for the unfair advantage, aren't

2:39:52

we? And in motorsport, some of

2:39:54

the cheats I've heard about are just brilliant. Like

2:39:56

what kind of stuff? So, I

2:39:59

can't... I remember hearing

2:40:01

a guy called Wynn Percy, who was a

2:40:04

touring car driver from the UK in the

2:40:06

60s and 70s, describing

2:40:08

how there was a

2:40:10

famous commentator we had called Murray Walker. He was

2:40:12

the voice of our motorsport for 40 years. He

2:40:14

had a very distinctive voice. He was a lovely

2:40:16

man, met him a few times. And

2:40:19

he'd often described Wynn Percy getting

2:40:21

out of this particular car he'd

2:40:23

been racing, covered in sweat because it

2:40:25

was such a monster to drive. But

2:40:27

it turned out that it was a V12 and it was

2:40:29

very, very thirsty. So to make sure that when they did a

2:40:32

fuel check at the end of the race, to make sure they

2:40:34

were abiding by the rules, he would

2:40:36

be furiously pumping a hand pump

2:40:38

underneath the seat to inflate a

2:40:40

bladder in the fuel tank to cut

2:40:42

off a load of the volume. And he told this story

2:40:44

about it. I don't think I'm misquoting it. He said, well,

2:40:46

that's why I was knacking it. It wasn't because it was

2:40:49

a V12. Because on the warm down lap, I knew I

2:40:51

had to pump this thing like 40 times

2:40:53

to fill up the bladder. Wow. And

2:40:56

it's amazing stories of just ingenious

2:40:59

cheats. There's so many of them.

2:41:01

I mean, Formula One is about not

2:41:03

getting caught. That's really what it's about.

2:41:07

What's the line between interpreting rules and not

2:41:09

getting caught? And I

2:41:11

love all of that. And I have a few

2:41:13

times said to people I know in those sports,

2:41:16

can I write that book? Will you tell me? They went,

2:41:18

no, I won't tell you any of the stories. I'll

2:41:20

tell them to you now as a friend.

2:41:23

But if they're ever published, I'm a dead

2:41:25

man. Right. I don't know how the money

2:41:27

involved. But the ingenious cheating. I

2:41:29

mean, in 1995, Toyota

2:41:32

was excluded from the World Rally Championship because it

2:41:34

just had a brilliantly simple piece

2:41:36

of cheating. All

2:41:38

the cars, the World Rally cars were turbocharged. And

2:41:41

you have what's called a restrictor, intake restrictor. So

2:41:43

you actually make sure that you can't take more

2:41:46

than a certain amount of air into the turbocharger,

2:41:48

which should limit the power and make it a

2:41:50

level playing field. But they created this brilliantly simple

2:41:52

bypass valve that meant that when the car was

2:41:54

running, the air would just go round. And

2:41:57

it wasn't the intake restricted was completely redundant. What

2:42:00

they didn't realize was that the World

2:42:02

Rally Championship had a couple of situations

2:42:05

where the cars would run side by side and be a

2:42:07

drag race. And so

2:42:09

the Toyota just fucked off into the distance.

2:42:12

And everyone went, what a rat cheating, aren't

2:42:14

they? And then they found it. But

2:42:16

this was perpetrated by a Toyota,

2:42:19

by a car company. And

2:42:22

I suppose those things I find fascinating. Wouldn't

2:42:24

you tell them to don't get ahead in

2:42:26

the straightaway? They didn't tell. The

2:42:29

driver didn't know. The co-driver didn't know.

2:42:34

They just knew that sometimes when they got in the car,

2:42:36

someone did that with a lever. They

2:42:39

didn't know. And Formula One

2:42:41

is not big in America, which

2:42:43

is odd. So how do you feel about it

2:42:45

here in Austin? Well, I saw it in Austin.

2:42:47

It's amazing. I love it. I

2:42:50

went to Coda. We have that

2:42:52

up there. That's Coda. My

2:42:54

friend Bobby owns the place. So he

2:42:56

took me around and showed me and

2:42:58

we went there for the races. It's

2:43:00

incredible. They put on one of the best races of

2:43:03

the season here. Isn't it awesome? The track's incredible. And

2:43:05

it's so fast. They're going so fast. It's so wild

2:43:07

to watch. And I find it

2:43:09

amazing how huge NASCAR is here, where they're

2:43:11

just going around in an oval. They

2:43:14

do have some spin circuits, don't they?

2:43:17

They do have some shorter ovals. But

2:43:19

yeah, Formula One is more complex. Way

2:43:21

more complex. And the vehicles themselves are

2:43:24

so incredible. And they're

2:43:26

so expensive. It's

2:43:28

just unbelievable how much money is involved in

2:43:30

Formula One. So it makes sense why people

2:43:32

would cheat a little bit. I

2:43:34

think it's this gray

2:43:36

area of interpreting a rule book

2:43:39

that's complicated, but also

2:43:41

trying not to get caught. Yeah. And

2:43:44

some of the, just the way that they've, through the

2:43:46

years, and it

2:43:48

creates subterfuge. It creates games. Another

2:43:50

great story, we covered this on Top Gear, was one

2:43:53

of the great interpreters of the rule book, was Colin

2:43:55

Chapman, who was the man that founded Lotus. And

2:43:59

he had found away in

2:44:02

something called the Lotus, I think it was 77. It

2:44:04

was a car that Andretti won the championship in. They

2:44:08

created a little ground effect, so

2:44:10

it's now a common thing, but he worked out that

2:44:12

if you sealed the sides of a car on

2:44:15

the road, you could effectively accelerate air underneath

2:44:17

the car and create a low pressure area

2:44:19

which basically sucked the car to the ground.

2:44:21

So you were generating downforce, not through wings,

2:44:23

but through accelerating air under the car. By

2:44:25

the way, any engineer who's interested in this,

2:44:27

I'm not an engineer, but I'm basically understanding

2:44:29

it, I've driven these things. But if my

2:44:31

terminology is wrong, I apologize. But effectively, you're

2:44:34

generating downforce in a way that you can't see

2:44:36

it on the vehicle. It's not got wings. And

2:44:40

what they would do is they'd lower these, there was a sort of

2:44:42

a handle, they'd lower these skirts when they went out onto the track.

2:44:44

So when the car went out on track in the paddock,

2:44:47

it looked like a normal car. But

2:44:50

they were going so much faster than everyone

2:44:53

else, he needed to find a way of

2:44:56

diverting the attention to the other teams. So what he would

2:44:58

do was at the end of a test session, quite often,

2:45:01

he'd have a guy scuttle from the back of

2:45:03

the garage, with something

2:45:05

underneath a piece of like

2:45:07

cotton or something or a blanket and run over

2:45:10

towards a service truck. Everyone would see him

2:45:12

do it. So all the teams were like,

2:45:14

they've got a trick differential, they've got something

2:45:16

special. But it wasn't, it was a kettle.

2:45:20

It was a kettle this guy was running

2:45:22

around with underneath the towel, just everyone thought

2:45:24

it was a component. It was a total

2:45:26

diversion. And I met the guy that used

2:45:28

to just run around with this. He

2:45:30

had a, it was like a teapotty kettle thing. He was

2:45:32

just told at the end of the session, put that under

2:45:34

there and run away with it. So everyone thinks it's like